Just in time for moving season, the U.S. Census Bureau compiled data that shows which county people have been moving in and out of between 2009 and 2013. For Boston’s own Suffolk County, the results are underwhelmingly logical.
As one might expect, most people moved during that timeframe to surrounding Greater Boston counties, chiefly Middlesex, Norfolk, Essex and Plymouth.
Following those, though, migrators have kicked the dust of Boston off their shoes for the lights of the big city. That is, they’ve roamed to New York County and Los Angeles County, home of, you guessed it, New York City and Los Angeles, respectively.
Then comes two more Bay State counties, Worcester and Bristol, and San Francisco, Cook County Illinois, home to Chicago.
Subsequently come counties with smaller metro areas than Boston’s including Hartford County, Connecticut (Hartford area); Hillsborough County, New Hampshire (Manchester and Nashua area); and, after Hampshire County here in the Commonwealth, is Alameda County, California (Oakland area); Providence County, Rhode Island (Providence area); and perhaps most surprisingly Washington D.C. which one might’ve assumed would be higher on the list.
As for those moving into Suffolk County, the pattern is relatively similar.
Most people come from surrounding counties but those who trek from out of state come from New York County, Providence County, Los Angeles County, Hartford County and, interestingly Kings County, New York (Brooklyn) and Rockingham County, New Hampshire (Portsmouth and Manchester areas).
“Nine of the top 10 metro migration flows were moves to nearby metro areas, with the largest flow of about 90,000 moving from the Los Angeles metro to the Riverside metro area,” said Kin Koerber, a demographer with the Census Bureau’s Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch in a statement.
Suffolk also receives more people from Fairfield County, Connecticut; Miami-Dada County, Florida; Suffolk County, New York; New Haven County, Connecticut; and Nassau County New York than it loses to.
What I personally find most interesting is the bottom of both these lists in the realm of single digits where the amount of people moving from and to Suffolk can be counted on one hand.
For example, a single person moved from Greater Boston to Lemhi County, Idaho, historically a Mormon enclave with a population of almost 8,000 per the 2010 census. In this particular instance, between 2000 and 2010 the population of Lemhi County soared almost 15 percent.
So perhaps that individual knows an advantageous thing or two about living in Idaho that’s lost on the lion’s share of Bay Staters.
In total, per the latest data, Suffolk County’s population os approximately 727,674. It saw 28,638 movers from a different state slightly more than movers to a different state, roughly 25,022.
Further the data reveals 31,760 movers cam from a different county within the bounds of Massachusetts while 35,872 left the county but remained in-state.
