The Sun Belt boom is alive and well. New data confirm that America’s decadeslong migration of people and firms to leading metropolitan areas of the Sun Belt and Mountain states has remained robust through 2024 and early 2025, contrary to recent narratives suggesting the bloom is off the rose in high-growth places like Texas and Florida.
Pro-growth housing policies – along with warm winters and welcoming attitudes towards business – are likely to propel further advances in the Sun Belt’s demographic and economic growth.
Population and jobs continue to grow strongly in virtually all metro areas that rank high for pro-growth housing policies in a new George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative report on America’s housing challenges, while growing at a more tepid pace – or shrinking – in places that score poorly for their policies. These trends confirm a central takeaway from the report: Vast differences across American cities in housing and other policies are dramatically reshaping where people live, work, and do business in 21st century America.
Recent policy shifts are likely to widen these performance gaps. Texas and Florida have enacted significant pro-growth housing reforms over the last three years, while other Sun Belt-Mountain states like North Carolina and Utah are considering similar moves. The cities of Austin, Houston, Charlotte, and Raleigh are national reform leaders at the local level.
Meanwhile, California has tightened its already constrictive rent control rules. The frontrunning candidate to become mayor of New York City promises to strengthen his city’s controls as well. These places are likely to experience declining development as a result, as St. Paul, Minnesota and Oregon have seen in response to new rent control rules in recent years.
Long-term trends are remaking America
While most large metros saw population growth from 2023 to 2024, breaking down the components of population change points to significant trends. Natural increase – that is, births minus deaths – has contributed less to the growth of U.S. cities over the last several years, including in 2024, than in any prior time in America’s history. This reflects today’s extraordinarily low birth rates, which will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
Immigration from abroad, on the other hand, contributed more to population growth than it has in many years. U.S. cities experienced a net inflow of more than 8 million immigrants during the four years of the Biden Administration. A disproportionate share of immigrants initially settled in the nation’s largest metros, consistent with America’s immigration history. This inflow explains why several large metros which had suffered population shrinkage in recent years – notably New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago – grew modestly between 2023 and 2024.
Today, however, net immigrant inflows have fallen by more than two-thirds as a result of the Trump Administration’s policy shifts. As long as current trends continue, immigration is unlikely to bring sufficient numbers to prevent a return to population decline in metro areas experiencing significant net out-migration to other parts of the United States.
Domestic migration patterns of 2020-2023 largely continued over the past year, but at lower rates. Virtually all metros that saw net in-migration over the previous three years experienced net inflows last year. Likewise, metros with recent histories of out-migration kept losing people to other places in the country. But in almost all metros, net flows narrowed substantially from the historically rapid rates of 2020 to 2023. This slowdown reflects the mortgage lock-in effect: Families with a 3% mortgage are hesitant to give up this favorable rate and enter into a 6.5% mortgage across the country, even when their prospective destinations have much lower home prices than the cities they would be leaving behind.
Among America’s 100 largest metros, 14 of the 15 metros ranking highest for net domestic in-migration rates between 2023 and 2024 are in the Southeast, from the Carolinas to Northwest Arkansas, based on a Bush Institute-SMU analysis of U.S. Census data. These prominently include Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina, Charleston and Greenville in South Carolina, Knoxville and Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida. Boise, Idaho is the one metro outside the Southeast that made the top 15. All of these metros are above-average performers for pro-growth housing policies in the Bush Institute-SMU report.
Other large Florida metros plus all the large Texas metros saw inflows, but also greater decelerations from 2020-2023 levels than the Carolinas and Tennessee experienced. Slowdowns in Florida and Texas reflect supersized home price appreciation in these states over the past decade and their resulting loss of affordability relative to other Sun Belt states.
The top 15 of America’s 100 largest metros for net domestic out-migration between 2023 and 2024 included New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose, though each of these metros saw decelerating outflows. Some lower-income metros that have long experienced net out-migration – like Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; El Paso, Texas; and Fresno, California – experienced accelerating outflows over the past year.
Americans are moving to booming suburban communities at a rapid pace, motivated by affordable quality of life and expanding economic opportunity in these places. Within large metros, almost all suburban counties that had boomed over the previous decade kept growing strongly, while virtually all core counties suffered net outflows. Suburban counties in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston metros dominated the rankings for highest net in-migration rates, as they have for the last decade and a half.
On the other hand, six of the nation’s largest core urban counties lost more than 1% of their population to net outbound migration last year: Queens and Kings counties in New York (the latter is equivalent to the Brooklyn borough of New York City); Suffolk County in Massachusetts (where Boston is located); Los Angeles County; Santa Clara County, California (the heart of Silicon Valley); and Dallas County, Texas.
Highly educated movers
Among the 100 largest metros, the 10 that have performed best over the past year for attracting college-educated movers who didn’t grow up there (adjusted for local population) include eight Sun Belt and Mountain State metros with relatively growth friendly housing policies, including No. 1 Denver; No. 2 Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and #3 Austin, based on Axios analysis of Census data. Washington and San Francisco are the only metros outside these regions that made the top 15.
The 20 that have been least successful in attracting college-educated movers are mostly in lower-income parts of the South and Midwest, the Rio Grande Valley, and inland California. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have all performed below average on this metric as well, reflecting high housing prices and quality-of-life considerations that have reduced the attractiveness of several large metro areas.
Long-term housing trends continue too
Sun Belt and Mountain state metros are adding far more homes than metros in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Pacific Coast as well, reflecting much more pro-growth housing policies. Among 30 metros covered in a Consumer Affairs report based on Zillow data, Sun Belt-Mountain metros hold all of the top 10 spots for single-family home permits per capita, including No. 1 Orlando, No. 2 Raleigh, No. 3 Boise, No. 4 Austin, and No. 5 Charlotte. The top 10 performing metros permitted about five times more homes per capita than the New York or Los Angeles metros and more than six times as many as Chicago.
As for multifamily development, the Austin metro permitted far more apartments per capita during the 12 months ending March 2025 than any of the other 77 metros covered in a recent Redfin report. Austin has shown that a sufficiently large building boom can push rents downward, contrary to widespread narratives that question the effect of housing supply on prices and rents.
Sun Belt-Mountain metros took eight of the top 10 positions in this ranking, with No. 4 Columbus, Ohio, and No. 5 Richmond, Virginia, being the only exceptions. On average, the top 10 ranking metros permitted roughly twice as many apartments per capita as New York, four times as many as Los Angeles or San Francisco, and six times as many as Chicago.
Businesses and tech jobs follow suit
Corporations are moving in the same directions as people. The top five destinations for corporate headquarters relocations between 2018 and 2023 were Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Nashville, Phoenix, and Houston, while the metros losing the most headquarters were San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, according to data compiled by Visual Capitalist. Measured on a per capita basis, Austin was far and away the largest winner in the corporate relocation sweepstakes, while San Francisco was by far the largest loser.
Tech jobs also migrated towards the Sun Belt and Mountain states over the last five years. Among the 40 largest metro areas, 14 of the 15 top-performing metros for technology sector employment growth rates from 2019 to 2024 were in these states, including No. 1 Dallas-Fort Worth, No. 2 Nashville, No. 3 Charlotte, and No. 4 Austin, based on new data from CompTIA. The one exception: 14th ranked New York City. Sun Belt and Mountain state metros collectively accounted for almost all job growth in the sector, as the West Coast and Northeast experienced significant declines. The San Jose metro, home to Silicon Valley, saw the fastest-shrinking tech workforce over the last five years, with a decline of 8%.
These trends broadly continued between 2023 and 2024, though smaller Sun Belt and Mountain state metros came to the fore. Albuquerque, New Mexico, experienced the highest growth rates of all metros included in CompTIA’s report, followed by Oklahoma City; Sacramento, California; Orlando, Florida; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio remained in the top 15 over the last year, though Austin fell to slightly below average. San Jose, San Francisco, and Boston saw the largest tech employment declines in percentage terms.
Looking ahead, leading Sun Belt-Mountain metros will likely keep outperforming other regions, as they have significantly more tech job postings as a percentage of existing tech jobs, based on CompTIA’s report. San Jose, Seattle, and San Francisco have the most AI-focused job postings per capita as of January 2025, but seven of the next 10 – including No. 4 Salt Lake City, No. 5 Austin, and No. 7 Raleigh – are in the Sun Belt and Mountain states, based on a University of Maryland study cited by Axios.
Our takeaway from this analysis: Differences in state and local policies are driving a vast evolution in America’s demographic and economic landscape. If you want people and firms to choose your city – or stay there, if they’re already present – you must have housing and other policies that welcome them.
