Millennials are flocking to this North Carolina city, new report finds

Simone Jasper
Paul Sakuma/AP

North Carolina is home to one of the nation’s hottest spots for millennials, a new report finds.

Raleigh ranks No. 4 on a list of the most popular places for people in their mid-20s and 30s to settle down, according to results published last month from the personal finance website SmartAsset.

To create the list, SmartAsset said it studied 152 of the largest U.S. cities with available data. The website ranked each place after weighing 2021 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We found net migration during 2021 in each city by subtracting the number of people between the ages of 25 and 39 who moved out of the city to a different state from the number of people in the same age group who moved into the city from a different state,” officials wrote in their report.

Raleigh made its mark after thousands of people flocked to the state, results show.

“The millennial population in Raleigh, North Carolina grew by more than 3% in 2021,” SmartAsset wrote. “This was a product of a net migration of more than 3,900 millennials to the city.”

It’s not the first time North Carolina’s capital city has been recognized as an attractive place for younger people to live.

In August, Raleigh was named one of the nation’s most desirable cities for Generation Z — often defined as people ages 10 to 25. In that report, the city was recognized for having a younger population and low unemployment rates but fell short when it came to affordability and activities, McClatchy News reported.

The results come after the town of Cary, just west of Raleigh, was named a top millennial destination last year. For those rankings, SmartAsset examined moving trends in 180 cities nationwide.

On the latest list, Raleigh was the only place in North Carolina to earn a spot in the top 10. Rounding out the top five were:

  • Austin, Texas, at No. 1

  • Denver at No. 2

  • Dallas at No. 3

  • Jacksonville, Florida, at No. 5

The city losing the most residents was New York, which had a “net migration of almost -79,800 millennials,” results show.

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