A lot of Americans are moving South - and many of them are heading to Florida

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A lot of Americans are moving South - and many of them are heading to Florida

county domestic migration map

Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from US Census Bureau

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Americans are continuing their long-term trend of moving south and west.

The US Census Bureau recently released its estimates for how the populations of the United States' 3,142 counties and county equivalents changed in the year between July 1, 2017 and July 1, 2018. In addition to the overall population change, the Census Bureau also released data on the various components of that change.

The above map shows net domestic migration - the number of Americans who moved into a county from somewhere else in the US minus the number of people who moved out of that county to another US jurisdiction - adjusted by each county's 2017 population. Counties in blue had more people moving in than moving out, and counties in red experienced negative net migration.

See also: Here are the US counties where more people are dying than being born

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Suburban counties in the South and West regions tended to see more people moving in than Midwestern and Northeastern counties. Most of Florida's counties had net positive domestic migration.

Here are the 10 counties with populations of at least 10,000 with the biggest population increases from domestic migration per 1,000 residents. Three of the top 10 counties are in Florida, and another three are in Texas:

Although many Southern counties had big increases in population from people moving in, the region also dominates the list of the 10 counties with the largest decreases from domestic migration among counties with at least 10,000 residents:

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A recent Census Bureau report on migration that took a look at a handful of data sets covering different aspects of where Americans are moving reinforced the trend of Americans moving south. The report noted that in 2018, about 1.2 million people moved to the South from one of the other three regions of the US, while just 714,000 moved out of the South, for a net gain of about 512,000.

According to that report, Florida had the most people moving in among the states, with about 566,000 people moving to the state in 2017. The Bureau noted that the Empire State was the biggest source of new Floridians, with about 64,000 New Yorkers moving to the Sunshine state in that year.

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