Texas is the top destination — but most Californians move next door
About 661,205 people left California for another state in 2024. Texas took the largest single share, at 77,161 people.
That is the headline everyone reports. Here is the part they usually leave out.
Texas accounts for only about 12% of everyone leaving. Meanwhile Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon between them took around 181,000 people — more than twice as many as Texas. Add it up and the real pattern is not a mass exodus to one state. It is a lot of people moving a relatively short distance and staying in the West.
Bank of America’s analysis of its own customers found the same thing from another angle: 64% of people leaving Los Angeles stayed in the West. That covers one bank’s customers in one city rather than all Californians, but it points the same way.
Even the top five destinations together only make up about 40% of the total. The other 60% scattered across dozens of states. “Where Californians are moving” is a spread, not a stampede.
The top ten destinations
One thing to understand before reading the table. These are estimates from a survey, not a headcount, so each one carries a margin of error — the range the true number is very likely to sit within.
That matters for the rankings. Nevada is listed at 53,289 and Arizona at 52,383, but both have margins of around ±7,000. Those ranges overlap heavily, so second and third place are effectively a tie. Treat neighboring ranks as a group rather than a league table.
One important limitation: this data records the state people moved to, not the city. Someone counted in Texas might be in Austin, Houston, or a small town three hours from anywhere. Anyone telling you exactly which cities Californians are moving to is using a different dataset — or making it up.
Is the exodus slowing?
Possibly. California to Texas was estimated at 93,970 in the 2023 figures and 77,161 in 2024 — a drop of about 18%.
That is a big fall, and it would be easy to write a headline about it. But one year is not a trend. These are survey estimates with wide margins, drawn from fresh samples each year, so some of that movement is measurement rather than reality. You would want several years pointing the same way before concluding anything.
A separate dataset built from tax returns, covering 2022 to 2023, also ranked California to Texas first — around 82,481 people across 44,417 households. It is worth knowing that as independent corroboration of the ranking, but you cannot combine the two. They count different people over different periods using different methods, so adding or comparing the numbers directly produces nonsense.
One more thing about the date. The “2026” in the title is the edition. The underlying figures describe moves during 2024, published by the Census Bureau in January 2026. Any article claiming to show where people moved during 2026 is describing data that does not exist yet.
Popular does not mean cheap
Where people go tells you nothing about what your move will cost.
Our July 23, 2026 model put a two-bedroom full-service move from Los Angeles to Las Vegas at $2,401, and Los Angeles to Phoenix at $3,004. Both are planning figures for fixed assumptions on one specific corridor — not averages for the whole state, and not quotes.
Distance is only one factor. How much you own, stairs, elevators, parking, packing, storage, delivery terms, the protection you choose, and which direction you are traveling can all shift a price independently of how popular the destination is. Get the same inventory and the same list of services priced by several companies.
On timing, the FMCSA describes May to September as the usual busy season, when higher long-haul rates may apply. Price your exact dates rather than assuming a fixed summer premium — even a busy corridor can be cheaper in one direction than the other, depending on where the trucks need to end up.
For specific routes, see our Los Angeles to Las Vegas and California to Arizona cost guides.
Research the address, not the ranking
A popular destination is not automatically a good one, and it is definitely not automatically good for you. Hundreds of thousands of people moving somewhere tells you about their circumstances, not yours.
Compare the things that will actually appear in your monthly budget: housing at a specific address, state income and property taxes, home insurance (which varies enormously by hazard risk), the wages your job pays there, schools, healthcare, climate, getting around, utilities, and how far you will be from family.
And remember that a state average hides the difference between its expensive metro and its cheap rural counties. Two households moving to the same state can have completely different financial outcomes.
For the wider picture of which states are gaining and losing people, see our annual US migration report.