Pennsylvanians are moving to Florida at surging rates, census data show

The number of Pennsylvanians swapping their snow boots for flip-flops is surging.

New U.S. Census Bureau data show that the number of Pennsylvania residents who relocated to Florida has grown steadily since 2010, while the number of Floridians moving to Pennsylvania has stayed relatively flat.

The result is that the net loss for Pennsylvania in movers between the two states has grown from fewer than 2,000 in 2011 to nearly 20,000 in 2022.

Overall, Florida’s population in 2022 was 22.2 million, with 3.2 million more residents than in 2011, a 17% increase. Pennsylvania’s 2022 population was 13 million, having added 226,000 residents since 2011, a gain of only 2%. The nation’s population overall grew 7% from 2011 to 2022.

As for why, former Pennsylvanians’ reasons for moving to Florida vary. But common themes include housing costs, weather, and politics.

Florida’s desirability was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic because of its affordability and state leadership’s general (albeit not complete) aversion to lockdown restrictions, a report by the James Madison Institute noted. From July 1, 2021, to July 1, 2022, Florida’s population grew by nearly 417,000 residents, a pace equivalent to adding more than 1,100 new residents a day.

From 2020 to 2022, Florida had a net gain of more than 600,000 people who moved from elsewhere in the United States. In contrast, Pennsylvania had a net loss of about 16,000. New Jersey saw more than 100,000 more people move out of the state than the number of those who moved in.

Florida is one of nine states with no income tax, making it a lucrative place for upper-income households to reside compared with Pennsylvania or New Jersey, which have respective top individual income tax rates of 3.07% and 10.75%. Census Bureau records show that the number of New Jersey residents who relocated to Florida per year has tripled since 2009.

Last year, about 10,000 former Floridians moved to New Jersey, a figure dwarfed by the nearly 50,000 New Jersey residents who moved to Florida.

When Ramsey Walker, 33, and his wife were looking to buy a house in 2021, they noticed that prices in Florida’s St. Johns County were 30% to 50% lower than in Pennsylvania’s Blue Bell and Garnet Valley areas.

“The availability of new builds was huge, as well,” Walker said. “It was so much more affordable in Florida at the time.”

Walker, an IT recruiter, said some of Florida’s advantages for his family include less traffic, not having to worry about snow or freezes, and their close proximity to the beach. He said that he and his wife — who used to live in the Philly suburbs — miss having seasons, but that it was worth the trade-off. They added that they wish Florida offered more diversity and more progressive politics. A growing share of Republicans are landing in Florida, which has emerged as a GOP hotbed in recent election cycles.

Walker said that when he and his wife “kept to their own devices,” politics came into play less. But now that they have kids, there’s a case for moving back to Pennsylvania or somewhere else.

“We’ve pretty much been able to focus on ourselves since we’ve been here, but we have a toddler who will make us interact with the school system and policies more and more,” he said. “I could see us moving back to be closer to family once school age start for our children. That would hopefully be a better time to be in the real estate market, as well.”

As for those born in Pennsylvania, nearly 600,000 of them are now Florida residents, while relatively few current Pennsylvanians were born in Florida.

Still, for the Pennsylvanians landing in Florida looking for comfort food, there are plenty of Wawas to turn to. In fact, there are now more Wawas in Florida than there are in Pennsylvania.