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Over 200K people moved to Florida from California. Here’s where they went

Miami-Dade County tops the list

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The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that over 200,000 total Californians have moved to Florida since 2016.

Within that same timeframe, Florida saw an average of over 600,000 people moving in from other states each year, leading to a huge explosion in Florida’s population.

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However, data shows that not all Californians have stuck around during that time.

Between 2016 and 2020, just under 30,000 people reported being in Florida after moving from California, with most moving from San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Orange or Alameda counties.

[CLICK IN THE MAP BELOW TO SEE HOW MANY MIGRANTS LEFT EACH CALIFORNIA COUNTY FOR FLORIDA.]

Meanwhile, the top five Florida counties where these Californians moved to included the following:

  • Miami-Dade County (2,831 migrants)
  • Broward County (2,566 migrants)
  • Duval County (2,078 migrants)
  • Palm Beach County (1,886 migrants)
  • Hillsborough County (1,848 migrants)

In Central Florida, Orange and Brevard counties saw the greatest number of new Californian residents.

[CLICK IN THE MAP BELOW TO SEE HOW MANY MIGRANTS MOVED TO EACH FLORIDA COUNTY FROM CALIFORNIA.]

After the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, even more people began flocking to Florida — and California was no exception.

Nearly 740,000 people moved to Florida from other parts of the country in 2022, and California migrants accounted for over 50,000 — approximately 7% — of them.

In fact, there was a roughly 80% increase in the number of people coming to Florida from California between 2016 and 2022, the data indicates.

This comes as Florida’s housing markets have become increasingly stressed thanks to increased demand by the enormous influx of people into the state.

In 2022, Florida saw nearly 250,000 net migrants — an increase of around 50% from 2016.

While migration data has yet to be released by the USCB for 2023 and 2024, the most recent growth trends indicate that these problems might not be going away anytime soon.

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