The top 10 places Americans moved to at the height of the pandemic in 2020

Published in

Business Insider

4 min readJan 6, 2021

Americans fled urban cores at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. US Postal Service data shows that many people decamped to Texas.

**Six of the 10 places on the list are located in Texas.** RoschetzkyIstockPhoto/Getty Images

By Taylor Borden

The coronavirus pandemic upended American life this past spring and summer, driving millions to move in search of more comfortable work-from-home locales and greener pastures.

Analyzing US Postal Service data, MyMove found that almost 16 million Americans moved between February and July. Mail-forwarding requests to USPS made in that time frame show that moving Americans mostly fled urban cores and relocated to more suburban areas.

Some moves were short-term. Temporary change-of-address requests to the US Post Office were up 27% in 2020 versus 2019. Permanent change-of-address requests were up 2% from last year.

Requests from the height of the pandemic largely show that Americans were moving away from cities and toward less densely populated suburbs. New York City lost over 110,000 residents from February to July, according to USPS. Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles lost thousands, too.

Texas, however, gained thousands of residents amid the pandemic.

Of the top 10 places that gained residents per USPS, six were located in Texas. All were suburbs of the state’s largest cities: Houston, Dallas, and Austin.

While it seems like everyone is moving to the Lone Star State, other locations in Florida and Idaho made the list, along with a tony Hamptons neighborhood in New York state.

Keep reading for a look at the most popular locales Americans decamped to this year: