By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Wondering where all those new Arizonans are coming from?
New estimates from the US Census Bureau show that more than 256,000 people moved here last year from elsewhere. And almost a quarter of them arrived here from another country.
However, there has been much of what is called internal migration.
That includes more than 54,000 former Californians who, if you believe some of the political rhetoric, are people fleeing that state’s liberal policies.
Still, if things are that bad there, that doesn’t explain the fact that about 21,000 Arizonans concluded during the same period that life is better on the West Coast.
And certainly, if what drove people to Arizona was the state’s more conservative politics, that doesn’t explain the nearly 17,000 deep-red Texasers who decided they preferred Arizona. Still, that was outnumbered, if only slightly, by the 19,900 Arizonans who left for the Lone Star State.
All of this, of course, is speculation.
People move for all kinds of reasons, like better weather.
Consider the weather. More than 6,700 new Arizonans came from Michigan last year and nearly 5,700 from Minnesota.
However, it seems that those harsh winters were not a deterrent for everyone.
About 4,000 Arizonans have decided they’d rather live in the Great Lakes state. And nearly 4,800 decided they wanted to be in the Land of 1,000 Lakes.
The best fishing?
A lot of it comes down to people going where the jobs are.
Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2023 show that the number of jobs in Arizona increased by 2.1%. That was good enough to rank 12th in the nation.
By contrast, New York was fifth from the bottom, at less than half that figure.
So it’s perhaps no surprise that more than 7,600 New Yorkers packed up and moved to Arizona last year. However, about 3,500 Arizonans walked the other way, perhaps because of the bright lights of Broadway.
Another big contributor to Arizona’s population growth was Oregon, where nearly 10,500 of its residents chose the Grand Canyon State. That compares to 7,144 Arizonans who went the other way.
And speaking of the Northwest, more than 12,800 current Arizonans came from Washington compared to 10,675 who went the other way.
There are some places beyond Texas that have apparently been bigger lures to Arizonans than the number of their residents who have come here.
For example, Arizona took 1,373 people from Alabama last year. However, nearly 4,500 residents here have decided they’d rather be there. And more Arizonans have moved to Colorado than residents of that state have come here.
So are Kentucky and Nevada. And both North and South Carolina, which have growing economies, also attracted more Arizonans than came here from there.
And for some reason, the number of Arizonans who left for West Virginia is 22 times greater than the number who left the mountain state.
However, Arizona ranks 14th in overall state population.
While the most recent census figures are only for 2023, other federal agency statistics show that these migration patterns are not isolated.
Of more than 7.43 million Arizonans, only 2.91 million were born here. That is less than 40%.
By contrast, nearly 1.1 million current residents were born in a foreign country, about one in five Arizonans. The Census Bureau has no breakdown of their legal status.
Domestically, more than 768,000 current residents were born in California. In other words, out of any random group of 10 Arizonans you meet on the street, one is from the Coast.
The state has more than 177,000 residents born in New York and 155,000 from the Lone Star State.
Other
Other large contributors to Arizona’s population include more than 138,000 from Michigan, 120,000 from Washington, nearly 100,000 from Minnesota, and about 98,000 from Pennsylvania.
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State / 2023 inflow / 2023 outflow / Residents born there now live here

Alabama / 1,373 / 4,470 / 13,610
Alaska / 2,017 / 618 / 18,490
Arkansas / 1,896 / 1,112 / 23,352
California / 54,222 / 21,152 / 768,642
Colorado / 8,344 / 12,378 / 91,143
Connecticut / 1,085 / 657 / 29,281
Delaware / 514 / 476 / 6,078
District of Columbia / 74 / 242 / 10,488
Florida / 12,762 / 8,361 / 48,740
Georgia / 6,326 / 2,706 / 22,591
Hawaii / 2,226 / 1,932 / 20,750
Idaho / 5,132 / 4,026 / 34,232
Illinois / 9,030 / 4,417 / 279,846
Indiana / 2,974 / 2,123 / 86,553
Iowa / 6,805 /3,078 / 81,080
Kansas / 3,383 / 2,365 / 50,324
Kentucky / 1,555 / 2,484 / 17,545
Louisiana / 2,514 / 669 / 19,368
Tomorrow / 350 / 375 / 14,041
Maryland / 1,972 / 2,202 / 30,780
Massachusetts / 3,316 / 1,427 / 50,093
Michigan / 6,740 / 4,049 / 138,544
Minnesota / 5,582 / 4,770 / 99,569
Mississippi / 816 / 1,356 / 11,783
Missouri / 7,390 / 5,699 / 61,681
Montana / 2,261 / 823 / 26,582
Nebraska / 2,694 / 1,367 / 48,650
Nevada / 6,341 / 7,972 / 34,802
New Hampshire / 612 / 702 / 8,237
New Jersey / 2,082 / 1,140 / 71,450
New Mexico / 6,397 / 3,535 / 86,125
New York / 7,627 / 3,934 / 177,725
North Carolina / 3,646 / 6,443 / 25,343
North Dakota / 424 / 1,325 / 29,388
Ohio / 3,091 / 4,352 / 128,803
Oklahoma / 2,925 / 3,093 / 34,474
Oregon / 10,465 / 7,144 / 63,426
Pennsylvania / 4,740 / 3,773 / 97,807
Rhode Island / 145 / 79 / 6,598
South Carolina / 1,186 / 2,578 / 11,564
South Dakota / 1,892 / 908 / 25,370
Tennessee / 4,498 / 3,907 / 23,976
Texas 16,679 / 19,900 / 155,610
Utah / 5,766 / 6,639 / 78,342
Vermont / 242 / 419 / 4,093
Virginia / 4,441 / 4,091 / 34,859
Washington / 12,844 / 10,675 / 120,355
West Virginia / 40 / 897 / 10,243
Wisconsin / 4,015 / 3,304 / 82,874
Wyoming / 2,501 / 1,526 / 17,266

Abroad / 58,640 / NA / 1,078,602

— Source: US Census Bureau estimates