Gen Z Exodus from California to Texas Accelerates
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What happened
U.S. Census Bureau data for 2024, analyzed by LendingTree, showed that an estimated 10.7 million of 44.6 million Gen Z adults — 23.9 percent — moved to a different state, a higher share than Millennials (14 percent), Gen X (7.2 percent), or Baby Boomers (5.2 percent). California recorded the largest net loss of Gen Z adults, at 58,109, including an estimated 19,287 who left for Texas; New Jersey lost 37,556 and Illinois 20,031, while South Carolina posted the largest net gain, at 22,843. Separately, Redfin’s analysis of Census data found millennial and Gen Z movers choosing Texas cities more than anywhere else, with San Antonio recording the highest net Gen Z migration at 10,678 residents and Dallas and Houston leading millennial net inflows at 13,072 and 16,365. New York City and Los Angeles each had net migration losses in the tens of thousands among those groups, and from 2014 to 2024 Texas cities claimed three of the top five spots for them.
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2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
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- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Redfin, Matt Schulz and LendingTree
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- How it developed
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never reports that California lost more Gen Z adults than any other state, so the story reads as a hunt for cheaper Texas cities rather than an exodus from California. Right-leaning coverage puts California's net loss at 58,109. It also counts 19,287 who left California for Texas. Left-leaning coverage instead names San Antonio as the top Gen Z city destination without saying how many of those arrivals came from California or any other single state.
Right-leaning coverage leads with California shedding Gen Z adults faster than any other state. Left-leaning coverage leads with a New York graduate moving to San Antonio and folds millennials into the same Texas-city story, a comparison the other side never makes.
Did the California-to-Texas flow actually speed up, or is 2024 just a large one-year count?
Bottom line
If you read only Business Insider, California never appears as the state losing the most Gen Z adults — Fox Business is the outlet that puts that loss at 58,109.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- California had the largest net loss of Gen Z adults in 2024, at 58,109
- South Carolina had the largest net gain of Gen Z adults in 2024, at 22,843
- Texas cities claimed three of the top five spots for millennial and Gen Z movers from 2014 to 2024
- Recent younger movers to Texas are choosing where to start a career rather than where a remote salary will stretch farthest
The Left View
Business Insider frames the Texas inflows as an affordability and early-career location story, not a remote-work salary play. Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said pandemic-era movers had brought coastal paychecks, but recent younger movers face entry-level jobs that “tend to be more in-person, or at least hybrid,” so they are asking “Where do I want to start my career?” rather than where a salary will stretch furthest. She said that for people “not going for that $300,000 salary” who are “just trying to build a middle-class life in a place that’s affordable to be middle class, Texas offers them that,” citing a more diverse job market and lower housing costs than New York or Los Angeles. The outlet illustrated the gap with a San Bernardino couple whose rent fell from about $2,350 to $1,250 after moving to San Antonio, and noted that Denver, a 2020–2021 destination, has since seen net Gen Z and millennial losses as it grew more expensive while Texas remained “the more affordable option.”
The Right View
Fox Business frames 2024 as California leading the nation in a “Gen Z exodus” as “young residents flock to Texas,” foregrounding that state’s unmatched net loss and the large California-to-Texas flow. LendingTree’s Matt Schulz called one-in-four Gen Z adults crossing state lines “an awful lot of people and it’s by far the biggest percentage of any other generation,” tying that mobility to college, first jobs, and greater flexibility. He said states with the biggest net losses are “among the more expensive states — California, Massachusetts, places like that,” and that “we can safely say that affordability was driving at least part of this” because of “tremendous differences among the various states.” He added that taxes, jobs, family, and culture also matter, and that destination states had “not one common thread,” including places as disparate as Texas, Washington, and New York.
Our Take (balanced)
The left-leaning account’s strongest argument is that housing costs and the in-person or hybrid nature of entry-level work, not politics or remote-work arbitrage, explain the Texas city inflows: Fairweather’s career-start framing, the middle-class affordability quote, the San Bernardino-to-San Antonio rent drop, and Denver’s later net losses as it grew more expensive. The right-leaning account’s strongest argument is the scale of California’s nation-leading Gen Z net loss and the size of the flow to Texas, which Schulz links to expensive states shedding young adults who can still move. The central unresolved tension is whether California’s outflow is simply the sharp end of a national affordability gradient — one that, in Schulz’s own telling, also lacks a single ideological destination pattern — or a distinctive flight from California’s high-cost model that the Texas numbers uniquely dramatize.
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