How Have American Migration Patterns Changed in the COVID Era?

Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, popular accounts and new data have contributed to a narrative of major deconcentration to less dense neighborhoods and smaller regions. In turn, this informs long-range regional growth policies. Pandemic-period deconcentration is thought to be fueled by the constraints of restricted public activity and the widespread emergence of remote and hybrid work. This paper develops a regression model of the push-and-pull factors of interregional migration using 2015–2019 origin-destination data and compares it with newly-available US Postal Service address change data, which provide monthly in- and out-moves at the relatively fine ZIP-code level. Model results highlight the continued pull of job growth for migrants and find that household overcrowding—as a regional measure of housing supply—is more closely linked to migration than housing cost. Address change data covering the pandemic's peak confirm the increase in large-region out-migration and a corresponding influx in small places. However, in the later stage of the pandemic from July 2021 to June 2022, the highest population regions returned to their previous migration trends and dense ZIPs rebounded further to their previous migration levels, suggesting that a shorter-term, COVID-induced deconcentration process differed from the background trend of moves down the urban hierarchy.