Why People Moved in 2022

The top reasons Americans moved in 2022 included housing, family and employment, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The CPS ASEC asks survey respondents whose residence differs from one year prior what their reason for moving was. Twenty top reasons fell into four categories: housing, family, employment and other.

In 2022, housing was the most common reason for moving, with 41.6% of respondents citing housing-related reasons. These included wanting a newer/better/larger home (14.4%), wanting to own a home instead of renting (8.5%), wanting cheaper housing (7.7%), other housing-related reasons (5.5%), wanting to live in a better neighborhood or area with less crime (4.7%) and foreclosure/eviction (0.7%). This category decreased from 2021 when housing-related reasons were cited by 45.7% of movers.

The second largest category of reasons for moving was family, which increased from 24.6% in 2021 to 26.5% in 2022. Last year, 11.2% of respondents moved to establish their own household, 9.2% cited other family-related reasons and 6% moved because of a change in marital status. The latter was up significantly, with an increase of 1.2% of people moving because of a change in their marital status.

Employment-related reasons increased slightly from 15.8% in 2021 to 16.1% in 2022. These reasons included new jobs or job transfers (9.2%), the desire for a shorter commute (4.2%), lost jobs or job searches (1.3%), retirement (0.8%) and other job-related reasons (0.5%).

The remaining 15.9% of respondents moved for other reasons not fitting into these three categories. Reasons in the other category included unmentioned reasons (5.8%), a relationship with an unmarried partner (4.4%), attending or leaving college (2.9%), health (1.5%), change of climate (0.9%) and natural disaster (0.3%).

Additionally, in 2022, 53.5% of people moved within the same county, which was a significant decrease compared to 2021, when that same number was 58.4%.

On the other hand, 41.7% of respondents moved to a different county (an increase from 39.3% in 2021), with 24.3% of those moves occurring within the same state and 17.3% occurring out-of-state.

Internationally, 4.9% of movers moved from abroad in 2022, which was a significant increase compared to 2.3% in 2021. This number includes Puerto Rico and U.S. island areas.

Overall, in 2022, approximately 28.2 million people moved to or within the United States. This was an increase from 2021 when 27.1 million people moved. This also broke the previous trend of the number of movers decreasing yearly. In 2018, the earliest data provided, 32.4 million people moved. That number decreased in 2019, 2020 and 2021.