this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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If Gen Z has 50 million people, then this map shows that they are not moving.
23K is only 0.046% of 50 million.
All together, only half of a single percent have moved, according to this graph.
Seems like everybody's staying put, and this map means nothing.
Well, these are net changes. If some amount of people moves from New York to California and the same amount moves the other direction, it doesn't show up.
Which means the map means even more nothing.
True. Which begs the question, what is this map for?
I always assume some political angle on posts like these.
I know I am assuming malice when incompetence may be the better answer, but my uninformed speculation leads me to think the mismanaged numbers are trying to send a message.
Well, the map says it's from realtor.com so the purpose might just be to try to understand and anticipate market trends. It might have relevance to an investor even if it doesn't tell us much about society or Gen Z. I could see someone spreading it to make it look like people find conservative areas more appealing, but I wouldn't accuse OP of that without more basis.
I would assume that there are two primary factors at work: cost of living, and economic opportunity. California may be an economic powerhouse, but if you can buy a suburban house in SC for a fraction of its CA equivalent, then that would be a factor. If you're living in Maine, even if houses are cheap, you might want to go somewhere where more things are happening. It's not necessarily a matter of people wanting to live in more conservative areas; if conservative policies demolished the local economy and ruined home values, that would mean more cheap real estate that people can afford, regardless of how they feel about the politics of the area.
Important rule when looking at such maps, always ask yourself what the map is not showing
It's net movement, not gross. There's raw data that shows all 53 x 53 of how those born in the 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and overseas live in the 50 states + DC + PR + non-US. I can't do the analysis easily from my phone, but you can break it out to what percentage of Americans live in a different state of birth. There's probably raw data that can show the Gen Z specific stats, too.
Yeah, I’d like to see per capita numbers.
You get easily over 100k people moving a year and you think this is significantly insignificant?
It is not uncommon for Americans to move multiple times in their lifetime.
There are around 350 million Americans, with 50 to 70 million Gen Z alone.
In that context, yes, 100K is insignificant, being 0.0286% of the total population.
All the older gens been moving to Missouri. It's fucked the people from the state. It was a lower wage state with more affordable housing because of it. People from places like California sell off their crazy expensive house, but a home in Missouri, and have a big retirement and a spare six figures. Now people from Missouri can't afford homes or afford to retire. So many "landlords" are also originally from out of state. They moved here and bought a few extra townhouses so they don't have to work. I was lucky enough to get a house before things got crazy expensive. What I paid $130k for 15 years ago is now $300k at a much higher interest rate. No one from around here can afford that.
If you add all the positive changes, you get 179k. This is 23.9% of GenZ according to the map, so the map claims there are 749k GenZ in total (of which 23.9% moved).
I'm not sure how they are calculating under 1 million GenZ in 2024. Anyway, the map is still bad for not doing population density per state.
Remember that the numbers on the states are net numbers. If Texas has 500,000 Gen Z emigrants and 511,000 Gen Z immigrants, that only shows up as 11,000 here while still meaning a vastly higher proportion of Gen Z migrating across state lines. If every state paired up with one other one and exchanged 100,000 Gen Z people, you'd have 5,000,000 Gen Z migrants but every state on the map would show zero
Ah right, my bad
Well, you looked at it, and engaged with it. So, job done?