Each year U-Haul releases a migration trends report which is calculated by taking the number of one-way U-Haul vehicles entering a state and subtracting how many left it.
The results were pretty predictable, honestly. But it's nice to have some data to back up what we all know anecdotally: People moving to places where they have more freedom.
Coming in at #1 in 2020 was Tennessee.
Which makes a lot of sense when you consider that Tennessee has no income tax, lots of jobs, decent weather, doesn't stomp on the throats of small businesses, and isn't California.
Tennessee saw a 12% jump over 2019, and leap-frogged both Florida and Texas who had held the first and second positions on U-Haul's list for the previous four years.
California was dead last on the list (surprise, surprise), with Illinois and New Jersey right before them.
California ranks last by a wide margin, supplanting Illinois as the state with the greatest net loss of U-Haul trucks. California has ranked 48th or lower since 2016. Illinois has been 49th or 50th since 2015, when U-Haul began ranking states based on annual net gain.
Here's a list of the top 10 so you can see how your state did:
You'll notice that all but three of those are red states. And when you compare U-Haul's data with how those states score in terms of economic and personal freedom, you see a clear pattern.
