Score a win for Mayberry. Small-town America, like the iconic setting of TV shows The Andy Griffith Show from the 1960s, in 2023 saw more immigration than larger areas for the first time in decades.
The remote work boom that prompted Americans to flee urban areas for mountain hamlets and beach towns during the pandemic continued at least until last year, according to a University of California demographer. Virginia. Hamilton Lombard. Last year, an estimated 291,400 people migrated from other regions to America’s small towns and rural areas, which Lombard defines as metropolitan areas with populations of 250,000 or fewer.
That number exceeded net migration to larger areas for the first time since at least the 1970s, estimated Lombard, who works with the university’s demographic research group.
Areas with populations between 250,000 and 1 million saw net immigration of 266,448 people last year, while areas with populations between 1 and 4 million saw only a modest gain. Areas with more than 4 million residents were the biggest losers, losing nearly 600,000 residents last year, according to Lombard’s study using U.S. Census Bureau data.
“With a third of workdays done remotely in 2023, Americans benefit from greater geographic flexibility and are increasingly willing to move away from large population centers if their destination offers a good quality of life” , wrote Lombard.
The study focuses only on migration within the country and does not include immigration from outside the United States.
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The influx of people is already changing the Mayberry character of small-town America. In southern Virginia, tiny Martinsville, once nicknamed the “Sweatshirt Capital of the World” for its textile industry, has seen some of the strongest wage growth in the state. Its domestic migration rate ranked second in Virginia last year.
Starbucks noticed this growth and in 2021 opened its first cafe in Martinsville, Lombard noted in his report. report. Since then, the ubiquitous chain has expanded to other southern Virginia cities, he said.
To be sure, the continued growth of small towns depends, in part, on whether the work-from-home trend continues, Lombard said. He emphasized research on remote work from Stanford University, which estimates that about 28% of paid days in the United States in March were work-from-home days. This is down compared to the pandemic period, but much more than before Covid.
“If remote work persists, it looks like this trend will continue,” Lombard said.
