As Americans make more money, it appears they’re more likely to stay put. Households from the top 20% of earners — those earning $150,000 or more a year — are the least likely income group to have moved in 2023, according to a HireAHelper.com analysis of Census Bureau data.
Just 6.5% of these households relocated. That’s compared with 9% of those in the bottom 20% of earners (making $30,000 a year or less), the group most likely to have moved.
Homeownership may play a significant role. Higher earners are more likely to own their homes, Census Bureau data confirms, and owners are less likely to move than renters, HireAHelper’s other research has shown.
However, when high earners do move, they’re more likely to go farther away. Of the top-earning households that moved in 2023, 19% moved out of state, compared with 14% of low-income households, HireAHelper finds.
Still, 53% of the high-income households that moved stayed in the same county.
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While middle-class Americans flocked to Florida last year, higher earners spread out a bit more throughout the U.S. The Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach metro in Florida had the highest net gain of high earners in 2023, but only one other Florida metro — North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton — makes the top 10 for net population growth from this income group.
Other popular destinations include Bryan, Texas, and Santa Barbara, California.
Here are the 10 metros with the biggest net population gains of residents earning $150,000 a year or more.
Though high earners aren’t all descending on a single state, they do appear driven to the South. Five of the 10 metros that saw the biggest high-income population gains are sprinkled throughout Florida, Texas and Tennessee.
Like the middle class, a desire for new or better housing was the most popular reason high earners moved in 2023, with nearly 18% of high-income movers citing that reason. High earners were half as likely as low-income Americans to say they moved for cheaper housing, with just 6% of top-earners citing affordability as a motivation to move. That’s compared with 12% of those earning less than $30,000 a year.
However, high earners were more likely than other groups (12%) to say they moved for a new job or a job transfer.
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