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How big-city suburbs won the 2020 migration boom
Large city suburbs saw the biggest gain in residents during the pandemic migration boom, per Jefferies. It means the migration is more of a reshuffle.
2020 was the year urbanites took flight. But many of them didn’t go very far.
The pandemic’s great migration boom mostly consisted of urban dwellers leaving big cities for its directly outlying suburbs, according to a recent Jefferies note that analyzed the latest USPS data. “Large central metro” areas like New York City and Houston saw the biggest exodus, while “large fringe metro” areas saw the biggest influx of residents.
The trend is evidence that city dwellers sought more space during the pandemic but still wanted to remain close to cities — where employers and entertainment are — when the economy began to reopen, Jefferies states. Consider the San Franciscans who headed out to Sacramento or Oakland, or the New Yorkers who moved east to Long Island.
They’re all areas still within short traveling time to major cities, which Bloomberg has described as a reflection of an expanding regional labor market. Through spending as visitors rather than residents, it’s likely that these urban movers will help boost big cities, which stand to see an estimated 10% drop in spending due to a remote…
