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For the past three years, Oregon has been the most popular moving destination in United Van Lines' survey of their customers. But this year, Oregon is No. 3.
Considering Portland's rising housing costs, that's totally fine, but the weird thing is that we lost the number one spot to South Dakota. Vermont took second place, which seems reasonable enough. But really, South Dakota?
Still, Oregon's inbound movement was significant. 67 percent of Oregon's migration traffic was inbound, and only 33 percent was outbound (South Dakota's was 68 percent inbound and 32 percent outbound).
Another strange find in the study is the influx of retirees. The largest age group of those who moving to Oregon in 2016 were over the age of 65.
"We are seeing more retirees than ever decide to relocate," says UCLA Public Policy professor Michael Stoll in the survey. "These retirees are leaving at such a fast pace that the movement of millennials to urban areas in the Midwest and Northeast is being overshadowed."
Here's a full map of where people are leaving and where they're heading to:
However, most people moving to Oregon did so for a job (53%), with retirement as the second most popular reason (19%). The study notes that its data is representative of an increasing amount of people moving for retirement, not a decrease in the migration of younger generations (the movement of millennials to cities like Portland is still on the upswing).
The rankings were determined by the percentages of the net migration from each state. So it's worth noting that Oregon ranked among the top ten states for both numerical and percentage growth according to the 2016 census, whereas North Dakota and Vermont aren't on either of those lists. But considering other crossovers from both the census and United Van Lines include Arizona, Idaho and Nevada, there seems to be a pretty clear trend: The popular places to move to in 2016 have lots of mountainous beauty and not a lot of people.
Fair point, South Dakota.