More and more Americans are leaving California, while fewer are deciding to move there, meaning the Golden State has been facing an exodus of residents in recent years.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows which states more Californians are moving to, revealing that Texas drew the most Californians in that year.

Why It Matters

California has been expecting an exodus for some time, and according to a report by the American moving company U-Haul, which was released on January 5, the state has had the greatest out-migration for the sixth year in a row.

In 2025 though, it did experience a smaller net loss of residents compared to 2024.

What To Know

According to 2024 Census Bureau data, 77,161 Americans were living in Texas who had lived in California a year prior. Other popular states that Californians had moved to were Nevada (53,289), Arizona (52,383), Washington (43,938), Florida (36,194), Oregon (31,500), and New York (31,367).

The U-Haul report also indicated that, broadly speaking, Texas and Florida are leading with the highest in-migration out of all the U.S. states. Texas has been in first place for the highest in-migration seven times in the last 10 years, per the report.

Washington and Arizona were also ranked sixth and seventh on U-Haul’s 2025 list, suggesting that these states are not only popular states among those moving from California, but also more widely in the country.

Per the report, Nevada is also a state that is seeing a dramatic increase in the number of Americans moving there, rising 15 spots on U-Haul’s rankings in 2025 compared to 2024.

The company also said in an email to the news outlet SFGATE that Arizona, Nevada and Oregon were the some of the most popular destinations people from the Golden State were heading to.

Although, U-Haul’s data was collated based on over 2.5 million annual one-way transactions of Americans who used U-Haul to move their belongings, and therefore may not correlate directly to population growth or migration patterns.

Why Are Californians Leaving?

There could be many reasons why Californians are leaving the state faster than those moving in.

“Cost of living is high, taxes are high, [there is] increasing political polarization, and potentially also increasing climate hazards (such as wildfires in Los Angeles last January, for example),” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate and co-director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia University, told Newsweek.

He also said that housing is “very expensive” in the state, with a “tight” housing market, “because it is hard and expensive to build in California, much more so than in Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. To build the same market rate apartment building in California costs 2.3 times as much as in Texas.”

Van Nieuwerburgh said that efforts to “cut the red tape around development” may help this situation going forward. 

In regard to tax rates, he added that it is “higher in California than in some other states, and the new wealth tax that kicked in in 2026 has led some billionaires to move out, at least their taxable entities.”

International Arrivals

Although, while the data suggests that there has been an ongoing domestic exodus happening in California, data including international migration tells a slightly different story.

William Frey, demographer and senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and professor in the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek that even though California “lost domestic migrants for each year since 2000, it showed positive gain from all migrants during half of that time due to the high levels of immigration from abroad than domestic migration losses.”

He pointed to data he analyzed from the U.S. Census Bureau, which revealed that while net domestic migration for California was -239,575, the international net migration was 361,057, between 2023 to 2024. That also marked that highest international migration figure in the state since at least 2000.

He added: “The pandemic years were especially bad for California because domestic out-migration became larger and immigration dipped. But in 2023 to 2024, both shifted back to give California a positive population growth.”

What People Are Saying

William Frey, demographer and senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and professor in the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek: “While California has lost domestic migrants for all years since at least 2000, the volume of those dips shift markedly depending on national economic circumstances.

During ‘boom years’ in the rest of the country, just before the Great Recession, and during the recent pandemic, California’s out-migration increased sharply. But these out moves tapered off during the recession and more recently.”

He added: “Housing costs certainly matter but get amplified during particular times, and of course nearby lower-cost states such as Nevada and Arizona benefit from the larger flow of California out-migrants during those times. And in Texas boom years, Texas attracts migrants from many states including California.”