Americans Are Mobile Again After Sluggish Year

(May 10) -- Americans are on the move again, most often to buy a new home or find a better neighborhood, the Census Bureau reported today.

In 2009, 37.1 million people changed residences in the U.S., up from 35.2 million movers in 2008. That pushed the "national mover rate" to 12.5 percent in 2009. That's up from 11.9 percent in 2008, the lowest rate since the Census Bureau began tracking data in its geographical mobility report in 1948.

The report tracks mover rates, types of movement, who moves, why and how far.

Two men stack household items from a condo into a moving truck in Aventura, Florida, 2009.

Joe Raedle, Getty Images

Two workers pack a truck for a customer moving from Aventura, Fla., to San Diego, Calif., last year.

The hunt for housing was the greatest moving motivator. Seventeen million movers, 45.9 percent of those moving, said they moved to buy a new home or live in a better neighborhood.

Other major reasons for moving included family concerns (26.3 percent) and employment needs (17.9 percent).

By region, most moving occurred out West, where 14.8 percent of the population was on the move in 2009, up by 1.6 percent from 2008. Other regions had fewer movers, and the percentage of movers was relatively unchanged from 2008 to 2009. The Northeast had the lowest mover rate (8.1 percent), followed by the Midwest (11.6 percent) and the South (13.7 percent).

People left the cities for the suburbs as metropolitan areas experienced a net loss of 2.1 million movers.

Among movers, the largest bulk, 67.3 percent, remained within the same county. Just over 17 percent moved to a different county in the same state, 12.6 percent moved from a different state, and 2.9 percent moved to the U.S. from abroad.

The report also revealed:

Renters were much more likely to move than homeowners; 29.2 percent of all people living in renter-occupied housing units lived elsewhere in 2008. The mover rate of all people living in owner-occupied housing units was only 5.2 percent.
Last year, 23.6 percent of people with incomes below 100 percent of the poverty line moved within the last year, compared with 17.5 percent of people with incomes between 100 and 149 percent of the poverty line.
Blacks had the highest mobility rate last year (16.7 percent), followed by Hispanics (15.8 percent), Asians (13.8 percent) and whites (10.7 percent).