Where Do New Jersey’s Out-Migrating Millennials Go?

November 7th, 2018 by Tim Evans

What are the most common destinations, at the county level, for Millennials who move out of New Jersey? Part 2 of a series investigating where New Jersey’s out-migrating Millennials are going. Read Part 1.

New Jersey Future intern Alexandra Rome assembled the data on which this analysis was based.

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the most common destinations, by county, for people of all ages who move from New Jersey to other parts of the United States. In part 2, we look specifically at where out-migrants of the Millennial generation – typically defined as those born between 1980 and 2000 – are going when they leave.

While the overall county-to-county migration flows used in the analysis in part 1 are produced by the Census Bureau on an annual basis, migration data broken out by age range are only tabulated every five years. For the present analysis, we are thus restricted to using data from the two years – 2010 and 2015 – for which migration data by age are available from the American Community Survey. We look only at out-migrants age 20 or older, under the assumptions that younger migrants are either 1) too young in most cases to be the person in charge of making the decision for a household to move, or 2) moving to attend college, in which case the relocation decisions are often temporary and their inclusion may obscure other important trends in the data.

For each of the two years, we used the standard age ranges that most closely correspond to the age ranges into which adult Millennials (age 20 or more) would fall at the time:

For 2015, we included out-migrants aged 20 to 34 (covering people born between 1981 and 1995, with the youngest Millennials mostly not yet of age to be making relocation decisions)
For 2010, we included out-migrants aged 20 to 29 (those born from 1981 to 1990; younger Millennials were not yet adults, while older age ranges at this point corresponded to older generations)

Combining the two years of data, there were 193,054 people age 20 or older who left New Jersey for another state in either 2010 or 2015. Roughly half of them (49 percent) were Millennials and the other half were from older generations.

The table below lists the top 30 destination counties for New Jersey out-migrants for each of the two age groups (Millennials vs. older generations), each of which attracted close to or more than 1,000 out-migrants in the indicated age group in the two years combined.

Top Destination Counties for Out-Migrants from New Jersey, by Age Group

	Millennials			Older Out-migrants
Rank	Destination County	Destination State	Major City In County	Destination County	Destination State	Major City In County
1	New York	New York	Manhattan Borough (NYC)	New York	New York	Manhattan Borough (NYC)
2	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	coextensive w/city of Philadelphia	Palm Beach	Florida	West Palm Beach / Boca Raton
3	Kings	New York	Brooklyn Borough (NYC)	Bucks	Pennsylvania	NE Philadelphia suburbs
4	Queens	New York	Queens Borough (NYC)	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	coextensive w/city of Philadelphia
5	Bucks	Pennsylvania	NE Philadelphia suburbs	Northampton	Pennsylvania	Bethlehem
6	New Castle	Delaware	Wilmington	Queens	New York	Queens Borough (NYC)
7	Montgomery	Pennsylvania	N/NW Philadelphia suburbs	Broward	Florida	Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood
8	Bronx	New York	Bronx Borough (NYC)	New Castle	Delaware	Wilmington
9	Northampton	Pennsylvania	Bethlehem	Kings	New York	Brooklyn Borough (NYC)
10	Los Angeles	California	Los Angeles	Maricopa	Arizona	Phoenix
11	Orange	Florida	Orlando	Miami-Dade	Florida	Miami
12	Suffolk	Massachusetts	Boston	Los Angeles	California	Los Angeles
13	District of Columbia	District of Columbia	Washington	Wake	North Carolina	Raleigh
14	Broward	Florida	Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood	Bronx	New York	Bronx Borough (NYC)
15	Middlesex	Massachusetts	Lowell / NW Boston suburbs	Montgomery	Pennsylvania	N/NW Philadelphia suburbs
16	Delaware	Pennsylvania	W/SW Philadelphia suburbs	Lee	Florida	Cape Coral / Fort Myers
17	Maricopa	Arizona	Phoenix	Mecklenburg	North Carolina	Charlotte
18	Miami-Dade	Florida	Miami	Orange	Florida	Orlando
19	Chester	Pennsylvania	W Philadelphia suburbs	Chester	Pennsylvania	W Philadelphia suburbs
20	Westchester	New York	Yonkers / N suburban NYC	Hillsborough	Florida	Tampa
21	Harris	Texas	Houston	Fairfield	Connecticut	Bridgeport / Stamford / Danbury
22	Cook	Illinois	Chicago	Westchester	New York	Yonkers / N suburban NYC
23	Fairfield	Connecticut	Bridgeport / Stamford / Danbury	Monroe	Pennsylvania	Stroudsburg / far W exurban NYC
24	Mecklenburg	North Carolina	Charlotte	Harris	Texas	Houston
25	Centre	Pennsylvania	State College	Pinellas	Florida	St. Petersburg / Clearwater
26	San Diego	California	San Diego	Montgomery	Maryland	N Washington DC suburbs
27	Montgomery	Maryland	N Washington DC suburbs	Orange	New York	Newburgh / N suburban NYC
28	Hillsborough	Florida	Tampa	Middlesex	Massachusetts	Lowell / NW Boston suburbs
29	Lehigh	Pennsylvania	Allentown	Delaware	Pennsylvania	W/SW Philadelphia suburbs
30	Baltimore city	Maryland	Baltimore	Cook	Illinois	Chicago

Top Destinations for Older Out-Migrants

Let us first look at the counties that appear on one list but not the other. Counties that rank in the top 30 destinations for older out-migrants but not for Millennials include Pinellas, Palm Beach, and Lee counties in Florida; Wake County, North Carolina; Orange County, New York; and Monroe County, Pennsylvania. The first three clearly illustrate Florida’s attractiveness as a retirement destination for older people from the Northeastern United States but not necessarily as a draw for young adults. Wake County in North Carolina is interesting in that it contains a well-known city (Raleigh) that is growing rapidly, but it is a city that has experienced most of its growth more recently and in a more car-dependent pattern than is typical of the kinds of places Millennials are seeking out. Finally, the detailed age data indicate that Monroe County, Pennsylvania (the Stroudsburg area, across the Delaware River from New Jersey along Interstate 80) and Orange County, New York (in the lower Hudson Valley) are attracting primarily middle-aged migrants, likely people who are still working at jobs in the New York metro area and may be in search of cheaper housing, though not necessarily in the same walkable urban settings that Millennials favor.

Top Destinations for Millennials

Counties that rank in the top 30 destinations for Millennials but not for older out-migrants include the cities of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. (which are both independent of any county and are statistically treated as county equivalents); Lehigh and Centre counties in Pennsylvania; Suffolk County, Massachusetts; and San Diego County, California. Even though we restricted our analysis to out-migrants age 20 or older, Centre County, Pennsylvania, can probably still be explained by Penn State University attracting graduate students and/or people starting college a few years later than standard. But the others (with the possible exception of San Diego County) are characterized by older, more densely populated urban areas that are particularly attractive to Millennials. Lehigh County is interesting, in that an argument could be made that it is simply experiencing the same influx of North Jersey commuters in search of cheaper housing that puts its Lehigh Valley neighbor Northampton County on the list. But while Northampton County appears on the list for both age groups, the more urbanized Lehigh County is particularly attracting Millennials.

We can be more systematic about identifying counties whose in-migrants from New Jersey are disproportionately in the Millennial generation. Recall that 49 percent of all out-migrants from New Jersey for 2010 and 2015 combined were Millennials. Where are the individual destination counties where this percentage is the highest? That is, in which counties do Millennials comprise the greatest shares of incoming New Jerseyans?

To avoid the analysis being thrown off by counties with very small and potentially unrepresentative flows, we considered only the 164 counties that received at least 100 migrants from New Jersey in the two years combined. Among these counties, the table below shows the top 30 counties in which Millennials made up the highest percentages of in-migrating New Jerseyans:

New Jersey Out-migrant Destination Counties with Flows Most Dominated by Millennials

Destination County	Destination State	Major City In County	All NJ Out-migrants Age 20 or Older	Millennials	Older Generations	Millennials as a Percentage of All Adult Out-migrants
York	Virginia	Yorktown / suburban Newport News	278	278	0	100.0%
Washington	Rhode Island	Westerly / Kingston	107	107	0	100.0%
Richmond	Georgia	Augusta	153	146	7	95.4%
Centre	Pennsylvania	State College	1,042	966	76	92.7%
Montgomery	Ohio	Dayton	154	141	13	91.6%
Durham	North Carolina	Durham	291	259	32	89.0%
St. Johns	Florida	St. Augustine	141	121	20	85.8%
District of Columbia	District of Columbia	Washington	1,513	1,281	232	84.7%
Davidson	Tennessee	Nashville	167	140	27	83.8%
Monongalia	West Virginia	Morgantown	154	129	25	83.8%
Hampshire	Massachusetts	Northampton	103	86	17	83.5%
Baltimore city	Maryland	Baltimore	1,045	860	185	82.3%
Tompkins	New York	Ithaca	309	240	69	77.7%
Lackawanna	Pennsylvania	Scranton	1,050	812	238	77.3%
Lake	Illinois	Waukegan / N suburban Chicago	152	117	35	77.0%
Pulaski	Missouri	Fort Leonard Wood	102	78	24	76.5%
Providence	Rhode Island	Providence	1,054	795	259	75.4%
Cuyahoga	Ohio	Cleveland	472	352	120	74.6%
St. Louis County	Missouri	W suburban St. Louis	113	84	29	74.3%
Erie	New York	Buffalo	163	121	42	74.2%
Oakland	Michigan	Troy / Pontiac / NW Detroit suburbs	294	214	80	72.8%
Suffolk	Massachusetts	Boston	2,056	1,449	607	70.5%
Norfolk city	Virginia	Norfolk	240	169	71	70.4%
Chittenden	Vermont	Burlington	128	90	38	70.3%
New Hanover	North Carolina	Wilmington	151	105	46	69.5%
Monroe	New York	Rochester	678	467	211	68.9%
Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	coextensive w/ city of Philadelphia	11,445	7,819	3,626	68.3%
Prince George’s	Maryland	E suburbs of Washington DC	849	579	270	68.2%
New York	New York	Manhattan Borough (NYC)	19,174	12,694	6,480	66.2%
Hennepin	Minnesota	Minneapolis	232	153	79	65.9%

In all of these counties, at least two-thirds of in-migrants arriving from New Jersey are Millennials, compared to only about half of New Jersey’s overall outflow being Millennials. These counties are clearly disproportionately attracting Millennials from New Jersey relative to people in older age ranges.

What characteristics do these counties possess that might be making them particularly attractive to the current generation of young adults? Keen observers will note a few counties on this list that are probably attracting young adults because they are home to a major institution (like a university or a military facility) that attracts young adults by its very nature. In the next installment, we will attempt to remove some of these “outlier” counties that are disproportionately attracting young adults because of a particular institution within their borders rather than because of the characteristics of the host county itself. We will then examine the remaining counties that attract high rates of New Jersey Millennial out-migrants to see how they compare to the full spectrum of New Jersey out-migrant destinations.