TUCSON, AZ (Feb. 16, 2026) — Two different datasets — one “official” and one “behavioral” — are telling a compatible story about Arizona: the state remains a magnet for movers interstate, even as rankings shift depending on the yardstick.
The most apples-to-apples measure of how many people actually changed states comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. The U.S. Census Bureau released it on Jan. 21, 2026, but it’s based on the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates. The release includes the Census Bureau’s 2024 state-to-state migration flow tables, which track where respondents lived one year earlier versus where they live now and provide one of the clearest benchmarks for net domestic migration. Arizona ranked No. 4 nationally.
In the Census migration-flow table, Arizona shows a large gross volume of inbound moves and a strong net positive result — about 234,819 moved into Arizona from other states and Washington, D.C., in 2024, while about 179,314 moved out, producing a net domestic gain of roughly 55,505 residents. Flow details also underscore the dominant corridor shaping Arizona’s growth: California remains the largest source of net inbound migration, a dynamic that continues to influence housing demand, labor markets, and commercial real estate fundamentals across the state.
A second lens comes from U-Haul, whose U-Haul Growth Index ranks states by net gains or losses of one-way U-Haul customer transactions (truck, trailer, or U-Box). This is not a population estimate — it is a transactional proxy for DIY moving activity — but it provides a useful momentum signal. In U-Haul’s year-end 2025 ranking (released Jan. 5, 2026), Arizona ranked No. 7 nationally (down from No. 6 in 2024), remaining a net-gain destination even as the top of the list shifted to Texas, Florida, and North Carolina.
Taken together, the combined takeaway is straightforward: Census/ACS data shows Arizona gained tens of thousands of net domestic residents in 2024, and U-Haul data shows Arizona still attracting net inbound one-way moving activity in 2025. The apparent “disagreement” is largely about scope and timing — U-Haul measures only a slice of movers and ranks 2025 customer flows, while the Census release provides population-level 2024 estimates — not about the direction of travel.
For commercial real estate and economic watchers, this two-source view supports a familiar yet important point: Arizona’s demographic tailwind remains intact. Sustained net in-migration generally translates into household formation, service demand, and labor-market churn — dynamics that feed retail absorption, small-bay industrial demand, and office decisions tied to hiring and relocation.