Seattle has changed a lot since the pandemic, and let's face it — much of it hasn't been good. The cost of living has somehow climbed even higher. Downtown is still struggling to fully recover, with fewer workers and retailers and emptier sidewalks than it once had. Reports of homeless encampments are at a record high. Thousands of tech workers have been laid off.
Despite all that, here's something that hasn't changed: People keep moving here.
New 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey show about 51,800 people lived in a different state or a different country just 12 months earlier — that's nearly 7% of the roughly 773,000 Seattle residents age one and older.
That's a slightly higher number than just before the pandemic. In 2019, about 47,800 people had moved to Seattle from outside Washington in the past 12 months, which was about 6% of the population age one and older.
And Seattle continues to rank near the top for drawing new residents from out of state. Among the 50 largest U.S. cities, Seattle ranked third-highest for the share of residents who lived in another state or country 12 months earlier, behind only Washington, D.C., and Boston.
In Washington, D.C., 9% of residents arrived from elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad in the prior year. But D.C. is a special case. Unlike every other city on the list, it is not located within a state. That means anyone moving into Washington, D.C., from anywhere in the country is, by definition, moving in from another state. Its unusually high share of out-of-state movers is therefore at least partly a result of its unique geography, rather than a direct apples-to-apples comparison with cities like Seattle.
After D.C., Boston ranks second at around 7%. Boston has the highest share of residents enrolled in college of any major city, and the influx of out-of-state students each year contributes to its high ranking.
Rounding out the top five are Colorado Springs at 6.5% and Virginia Beach at 6%. A few other large cities, including Atlanta and Nashville, cluster just behind, each just below 6%.
Seattle’s inflow of new residents was driven mainly by domestic migration. About 5.3% of residents moved in from another state in the past year, while 1.4% came from abroad. The data does not show from which states and countries these movers came.
Interestingly, the five cities at the opposite end of the spectrum were all in California. In Bakersfield, just 1% of residents in 2024 had lived in another state or abroad one year earlier. Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, and Sacramento rounded out the bottom 5, all at 2% or less. The Golden State has sustained significant population losses due to domestic migration in recent years.
In Seattle, there were more total movers in 2019 than in 2024, but a higher share of them made local moves. Movers to Seattle from within King County fell from 113,600, or 15% of residents, in 2019, to 95,100, or 12% of residents, in 2024.
One thing to consider about this data: It captures only people who currently live in Seattle and where they lived one year earlier. It tells us who moved into the city, but nothing about how many people left Seattle, or whether departures have increased or decreased.
© 2025 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
