Ask which state Americans are moving to the most in 2026, and the answer depends entirely on whose data you trust. Atlas Van Lines ranks Arkansas #1, with 68% of its tracked moves heading in. United Van Lines ranks Oregon #1 instead, at 64.50% inbound. Both studies are real, current, and correct — they just track different customer bases.
Quick answer: By United Van Lines’ 2025 shipment data, the top five inbound states are Oregon (64.50%), West Virginia (62.12%), South Carolina (60.80%), Delaware (59.65%), and Minnesota (58.16%). By Atlas Van Lines’ separate customer data, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee lead instead. Population-level Census Bureau data agrees with neither list exactly — but confirms the broader Sun Belt and Southeast pattern both carrier studies point to.
Why the “Top States People Are Moving To” List Depends on Who’s Counting
As with outbound rankings, inbound migration data comes from four fundamentally different measurements: a moving company’s share of its own bookings (United Van Lines, Atlas Van Lines), raw truck-rental volume (U-Haul), actual population counts (U.S. Census Bureau), and tax-return address changes (IRS). A state can top one list and miss another entirely — and in 2026, several do exactly that.
The distinction matters because each measurement answers a different practical question. A moving company’s percentage-share ranking tells you which states are seeing the fastest relative shift toward inbound activity, which is useful for spotting emerging trends in smaller markets. Raw truck-rental and Census population data tell you where the largest absolute number of new residents are actually landing, which matters more for anyone studying housing demand, school enrollment, or labor-market growth at scale. Neither view is more “correct” — they’re built to answer different questions, and conflating them is where most migration headlines go wrong.
The 2026 Ranking: United Van Lines’ Top 25 Inbound States
Using the same 2025 National Movers Study shipment data (48 states plus D.C., ranked by inbound share of total moves), the top 25 destination states are:
| Rank | State | Inbound Share | Total Shipments Tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oregon | 64.50% | 1,842 |
| 2 | West Virginia | 62.12% | 293 |
| 3 | South Carolina | 60.80% | 3,931 |
| 4 | Delaware | 59.65% | 513 |
| 5 | Minnesota | 58.16% | 1,826 |
| 6 | Idaho | 57.80% | 936 |
| 7 | North Carolina | 57.77% | 7,538 |
| 8 | Arkansas | 57.25% | 959 |
| 9 | Alabama | 57.10% | 1,874 |
| 10 | Nevada | 57.00% | 2,142 |
| 11 | Indiana | 56.98% | 2,057 |
| 12 | District of Columbia | 56.94% | 908 |
| 13 | Arizona | 56.54% | 4,432 |
| 14 | Rhode Island | 56.07% | 601 |
| 15 | Tennessee | 56.01% | 4,049 |
| 16 | Wisconsin | 53.36% | 2,097 |
| 17 | Oklahoma | 53.16% | 1,648 |
| 18 | New Mexico | 52.90% | 1,533 |
| 19 | Utah | 52.47% | 1,658 |
| 20 | Montana | 52.37% | 779 |
| 21 | Florida | 52.19% | 12,803 |
| 22 | Missouri | 51.95% | 2,970 |
| 23 | Virginia | 51.78% | 8,204 |
| 24 | Kentucky | 51.73% | 1,761 |
| 25 | Georgia | 51.70% | 5,364 |
Source: United Van Lines 2025 National Movers Study, state-by-state shipment data. Vermont is excluded from the ranking — United moved fewer than 250 households in and out of the state, below its reporting threshold, despite having the single highest inbound rate.
15 States Cross the “High Inbound” Threshold — More Than Triple the Outbound Side
United Van Lines classifies a state “high inbound” once 55% or more of tracked moves are arriving. Fifteen states clear that bar in 2025: Oregon, West Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, Minnesota, Idaho, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Nevada, Indiana, D.C., Arizona, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Compare that to outbound migration, where only four states (New Jersey, New York, California, North Dakota) cross the equivalent “high outbound” line — a lopsided split that reflects a genuinely broader, more geographically distributed pull toward growth states than the narrower push away from a handful of high-cost ones.
Notably, Texas (50.70% inbound, rank #28) and Florida (52.19% inbound, rank #21, just inside the top 25) don’t crack the “high inbound” list at all in 2025 — both are now “balanced” by United’s own classification, a shift from their historical status as the country’s biggest migration magnets.
Small-population states also skew this particular ranking method in ways worth flagging. West Virginia (#2, 293 total shipments), Delaware (#4, 513 shipments), and Rhode Island (#14, 601 shipments) all rank ahead of far larger states purely because a relatively small number of extra inbound households moves the percentage dramatically in a low-volume state. That’s not a flaw in the data — it’s exactly what a percentage-share ranking is supposed to measure — but it’s a different signal than “where is population growth actually concentrated,” which is where Census Bureau numbers become the more useful cross-check.
Arkansas, Not Oregon: Why Atlas Van Lines Tells a Different Story
A separate carrier study complicates the picture further. Atlas Van Lines’ 2025 Migration Patterns Study ranks Arkansas #1 for inbound moves for the second consecutive year, at a 68% inbound rate — well above Oregon’s position in United’s data. Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee round out Atlas’s top inbound tier, all in the Southeast.
One specific detail stands out: Atlas found that Bentonville — home to Walmart’s headquarters — accounted for 38% of all inbound moves to Arkansas, making it the only state in the study where a majority of inbound moves concentrated in a single city. In every other top-inbound state, Atlas found arrivals spread more evenly across multiple metros.
U-Haul’s Truck-Rental Data Mostly Agrees — With One Big Exception
The U-Haul Growth Index, based on more than 2.5 million one-way truck and container rentals, ranks its top inbound states for 2025 as Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina — in that order. Three of those five (North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina) also appear on United Van Lines’ “high inbound” list, which is a meaningful cross-source agreement.
The exception is the one that keeps showing up throughout this data: Texas and Florida lead U-Haul’s raw-volume ranking by a wide margin, simply because so many more total households move in and out of both states every year than anywhere else. But that same enormous volume is exactly why neither state ranks as “high inbound” once the math shifts from raw counts to percentage share. A state can be the single biggest destination in America by headcount and still look “balanced” on a carrier’s books — both things are true at once.
What Census Bureau Population Data Confirms
Zooming out to actual population counts, the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 State-to-State Migration Flows shows the five largest net domestic migration gains were Texas (+85,267), North Carolina (+82,288), South Carolina (+68,043), Florida (+64,017), and Tennessee (+48,476). By percentage of existing population, South Carolina’s gain was the largest of any state at 1.26%, followed by Idaho (0.83%), Delaware (0.79%), North Carolina (0.76%), and Tennessee (0.68%).
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Delaware, and Idaho all appear on Census’s list, United’s “high inbound” list, or both — real convergence across an independent population count and a private carrier’s booking data. Texas is the outlier: it posts the largest raw population gain of any state by far, yet doesn’t even reach United Van Lines’ top 25 by percentage, because its sheer number of existing residents and total moves dilutes the inbound share.
Why People Are Actually Choosing These States
The stated pull factors are strikingly consistent across every state that appears on multiple lists:
- South Carolina: a combination of affordability, outdoor access, and growing job markets in healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics along major interstate corridors — cited as key draws for both retirees and remote workers, per regional relocation data on Upstate South Carolina’s growth.
- Idaho: wide open space and comparatively lower costs, drawing people directly out of higher-cost West Coast markets like Washington and California.
- North Carolina: a balance of urban amenities and lower cost of living, popular with both older movers and remote-capable workers.
- Arkansas: concentrated job growth tied to Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas’s corporate employment base, per regional Northwest Arkansas migration reporting.
- Tennessee: no state income tax combined with a lower cost of living than most coastal metros, a long-running draw for both retirees and remote workers relocating from higher-tax states.
- Nevada and Arizona: proximity to California’s job markets without California’s housing costs or income tax rate, making both a common landing spot for movers leaving the West Coast rather than crossing the country entirely.
What’s notable is how little these reasons have shifted from prior years — affordability, taxes, and job growth in a handful of specific industries (logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, corporate headquarters relocations) keep pulling the same cluster of Southeastern and Mountain West states to the top of nearly every list, even as the overall number of Americans moving declines.
One quick way to use this data: if you’re deciding where to relocate based on a “best states to move to” list, check whether the source is measuring percentage share (which favors smaller states with fewer total moves) or absolute population gain (which favors big states like Texas and Florida that don’t always top the percentage charts). The two answers can look completely different for the exact same year.
Where the Data Disagrees: Texas and Florida Aren’t Even in Everyone’s Top 25
The clearest disagreement in this year’s data: Texas and Florida still lead in absolute Census population gains and in U-Haul’s raw rental-volume ranking, but neither state cracks the “high inbound” classification in United Van Lines’ 2025 percentage-based study, and neither appears in Atlas Van Lines’ top inbound tier. Overall mobility is down nationally — a trend both carrier studies attribute largely to affordability constraints and limited housing inventory — which means even historically dominant destination states are seeing a smaller share of a smaller overall pool of movers.
Frequently Asked Questions About States People Are Moving To in 2026
Q: What is the #1 state people are moving to in 2026?
A: It depends on the source. United Van Lines’ 2025 study ranks Oregon #1 by inbound share (64.50%). Atlas Van Lines’ 2025 study ranks Arkansas #1 (68% inbound). By absolute population gain, the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Texas #1.
Q: Are Texas and Florida still the top states people are moving to?
A: By raw population count, yes — Census data shows both among the top five net gainers nationally. But by percentage of total moves, neither state currently qualifies as “high inbound” in United Van Lines’ or Atlas Van Lines’ 2025 studies, since their high existing populations and huge overall move volume dilute the percentage.
Q: Why does Arkansas rank so high on some lists but not others?
A: Atlas Van Lines’ 2025 study, based on its own customer bookings, ranks Arkansas #1 for inbound moves, driven heavily by growth around Bentonville. United Van Lines, using a different customer base, doesn’t rank Arkansas in its top 5, though it still qualifies as “high inbound” at 57.25%.
Q: Which states show up as inbound winners across multiple independent data sources?
A: South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee appear on both United Van Lines’ top-25 inbound list and the Census Bureau’s list of largest population gainers, making them the most consistently confirmed growth states in 2026 data.
Q: Is overall interstate moving activity up or down in 2026?
A: Down. Multiple studies, including Atlas Van Lines’ 2025 report, attribute reduced mobility nationally to affordability constraints, limited housing inventory, and the mortgage rate “lock-in effect” that keeps homeowners from selling and relocating.
Q: Where can I see the full state-by-state migration data myself?
A: The U.S. Census Bureau publishes its State-to-State Migration Flows tables directly on census.gov, and United Van Lines publishes its full annual shipment-based rankings, covering all 48 contiguous states plus Washington, D.C., in its National Movers Study newsroom release each January.
The honest takeaway: no single “top states to move to” ranking tells the whole story in 2026. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee show up almost everywhere you look, but the biggest states by raw population gain — Texas and Florida — no longer dominate the percentage-based rankings the way headlines assume. If you’re planning a move and comparing lists online, check which of these four methodologies is behind the number before you trust it.
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