About 39.6 million U.S. residents moved in the latest American Community Survey year. That equals 11.8% of people age one or older in 2024. About 29.9 million arrived from another home in the same state, 7.2 million came from another state, and 2.6 million came from abroad.
The count measures people, not moving trucks, households, shipments, or professional-mover bookings. It is the clearest current national answer when it is labeled “2024 ACS” rather than described as a live 2026 total.
The latest annual U.S. mover count
The mover rate declined from 12.1% in the 2023 ACS to 11.8% in 2024. That is a change of 0.3 percentage point. A clean historical comparison should use the same ACS table and definition each year.
Most movers stayed within the same state
Same-state movement is the dominant category. That includes a short move across town and a much longer move within a large state. The interstate category likewise includes both nearby border moves and coast-to-coast relocations.
Why 39.6 million is not the number of moves
A household of four contributes four people to the ACS count. A person who moved twice is classified by the residence at the survey date and the residence one year earlier; the survey is not a log of every moving event. Some people move without a professional mover, and one relocation can use several services.
Why another official survey reports a lower number
The 2023 Current Population Survey historical mobility table reported about 25.6 million movers and a 7.8% mover rate. The ACS and CPS use different samples, survey methods, population coverage, weighting, and collection periods. Both are official; they should be shown as separate series.
Use ACS for the latest large national and state comparison. Use CPS when the question depends on its long historical series, distance table, or detailed reasons for moving. Moveline’s distance-statistics guide explains the CPS mileage groups.
Housing is the largest broad reason category in CPS
In the 2023 CPS reasons table, housing-related reasons represented 41.3% of movers, family reasons 22.7%, employment reasons 21.0%, and other reasons 15.0%. These shares apply to the CPS mover population and should not be multiplied by the ACS 39.6 million total.
The categories show that moving is not driven by one national cause. A new home, household change, job decision, education, retirement, health, climate, and many personal needs can create different routes and service requirements.
Moving-company activity answers a different question
In this internal dataset, a “record” is a partner-network lead, not evidence of a booking, shipment, completed move, or unique person.
Moveline analyzed approximately 1.6 million internal moving records covering July 31, 2025 through July 30, 2026. These records describe activity within Moveline’s network; they are not a national population or migration estimate.
The ACS provides the national population estimate used in this article.
Keep the units explicit: people for ACS, employer workers for Census business statistics, and moving records for the agent-network research. The moving industry employment article explains the business measures.
How the Census at-a-glance page shaped this article
The Census at-a-glance page presents the latest mover rate and same-state and different-state shares before its technical note. This rewrite uses the same clear order, adds the rounded counts, and keeps the ACS-versus-CPS explanation after the answer.
