Legislators in Olympia still talk as if Washington is a magnet for business and new residents. The latest moving data says something more uncomfortable: Americans who already live here are looking for the exits, and they are taking their paychecks with them.
It’s hard to track migration behavior, but there are some “canary in the coal mine” sources that can help at least shed some light on what is going on.
Redfin’s migration tracker, which measures where home shoppers actually search, is a non-scientific, but telling indicator of who is about to leave. In the first quarter of 2026, Seattle posted the second-largest net outflow of house hunters among the nation’s 100 largest metros, 26,349 more Redfin users looking to leave than to arrive. Only New York was worse. The most common destination for those Seattle searchers was Phoenix, where a home costs roughly half as much. That is not a lifestyle fad. It is an affordability verdict.
Redfin’s broader pattern is the same story at national scale. Nearly one in five U.S. house hunters now shop outside their home metro, the highest share in records dating to 2021. The metros people leave are expensive coastal job centers. The places they target are cheaper Sun Belt markets. Seattle sits squarely in the first group.
Official population totals do not contradict that signal. They hide it. Washington’s Office of Financial Management estimates the state added 61,750 net migrants from April 2024 to April 2025. That sounds healthy until you notice the trend line: net migration fell by 7,500 in a single year and, except for pandemic-disrupted 2021, is the weakest reading since 2013. Domestic in-migration is running about 18 percent below pre-pandemic levels. International arrivals are what keep the headline number from going negative.
Among people already living in the United States, the ledger is worse. A Seattle Times review of Census data found Washington lost more than 20,000 residents to other states from 2020 to 2024. After 2020, the annual number of Washingtonians moving to another state jumped from about 198,400 to roughly 233,100, an 18 percent increase. Arizona was the largest net taker. Texas and other lower-cost states followed. Idaho has become a regular destination for families who can keep a remote paycheck and buy a house.
The Seattle metro has been losing Americans for years. HUD’s market analysis concludes that domestic net out-migration from the Seattle housing market area has occurred every year since 2017. International in-migration, much of it from Asia, has papered over the loss. That is not the same thing as residents choosing to stay.
While delayed in its availability, Internal Revenue Service data tells you who is leaving. Between 2021 and 2022, Washington recorded a net loss of nearly 19,000 taxpayers and dependents and about $1.66 billion in adjusted gross income. King County’s later IRS files show the same pattern in miniature: a net loss of about 13,000 people and nearly $2 billion in AGI in a single year. Even when the county gained people from other states, it still lost $446 million in income because the outbound households earned more than the inbound ones. That is the tax-base problem Olympia pretends is a myth.
United Van Lines’ 2025 study, which tracks full-service household shipments that skew older and more affluent, ranked Washington a net outbound state: 52.4 percent of its Washington shipments left and 47.6 percent arrived. Movers with money are not waiting for the next session to discover whether the capital-gains tax, the millionaire income tax, and the next round of housing mandates will make the math work.
People do not load a truck because a press release told them Washington is “open for business.” They leave when housing is too expensive, taxes keep stacking up, and the next better offer is a state that does not treat work and investment as a problem to be solved. Redfin’s search data are the early warning. IRS income data are the bill. If lawmakers want different numbers, they will have to change the reasons families are typing “Phoenix,” “Boise,” and “Dallas” into a search bar.
