By Jaclyn DeJohn
In just one year, 5.49 million millennials moved to large U.S. cities. While about 73% of these transplants moved to a big city within their current state of residence, another 19% traversed states to start new—and nearly 8% came to these cities from abroad.
Millennials are often in their prime earning years, and many have young families, which may significantly impact the communities they join and leave. With this in mind, SmartAsset ranked 271 of the largest U.S. cities based on the percentage of people between the ages of 25 and 44 who recently moved in.
Key Findings
These California cities were least attractive to millennials. Jurupa Valley ranked last with 2.35% of its population comprising new millennial transplants. Other cities that were among the 10 least popular include Santa Ana (2.58%), Elk Grove (2.60%), San Bernardino (2.78%), Oxnard (2.78%), Ontario (2.96%), El Monte (3.08%), Garden Grove (3.11%) and Modesto (3.12%).
Alexandria, Virginia, saw the highest influx of millennials relative to its population, with 12.67%—or 19,486— moving in during 2023, approximately 46% of whom came from out of state. Cambridge, Massachusetts, ranked second, with millennials making up 12.15% of new residents, or 14,197 people, 39% of whom relocated from outside the state.
Two California cities ranked high for attracting millennials. No. 6 Sunnyvale, 11.2% of population represented by new millennial transplants:, and No. 7 Santa Clara, 10.9%.
New York City had the most millennials move in. Not accounting for its population size, New York City had the most millennials join its perimeters at 362,649 move-ins in one year—accounting for 4.44% of the population. This number of move-ins was double that of Los Angeles, which had the second highest nominal move-ins at 187,210.
Seattle has the largest segment of millennials relative to its population. Just over 42% of Seattle residents are between the ages of 25 and 44. Seattle also ranked fifth overall for most popular places for millennials to move to, with 11.51% of its population made up of millennials who moved in in 2023.
Data comes from the Census Bureau 1-Year American Community Survey for 2023. This SmartAsset study included 271 cities that had available data and 100,000 or more people aged 1 or over. Millennials were defined as those aged 25 to 44. Cities were ranked by the percentage of the total population represented by millennials who moved into the city in 2023.
This story was produced by SmartAsset and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.