SC climbed the new U-Haul popular destination rankings for 2022. See where it ranks now

South Carolina was the third most popular moving destination among the states in 2022, a new report from U-Haul shows.

The ranking is an improvement over the Palmetto State’s fourth place spot just a year earlier, according to the annual U-Haul Growth Index.

Texas again nabbed the top spot in the ranking as it did the previous year. Florida came in as the second most popular state to move to in 2022. North Carolina held the fourth spot, the report shows.

“The 2022 trends in migration followed very similar patterns to 2021 with Texas, Florida, the Carolinas and the Southwest continuing to see solid growth,” John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president, said in a press release. “While overall migration in 2021 was record-breaking, we continue to experience significant customer demand to move out of some geographic areas to destinations at the top of our growth list.”

The U-Haul report lines up with new U.S. Census data released in December, which shows that South Carolina was the third fastest growing state of 2022.

South Carolina’s population grew by 1.7% to a total of more than 5.28 million as of July 1, 2022, the Census data shows. Only the states of Florida at 1.9% and Idaho at 1.8% had faster growth by percentage.

In terms of numeric growth, South Carolina ranked sixth — gaining 89,368 residents year over year. Texas took the top spot for the category, growing by 470,708 people over the previous year.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the South was the fastest growing region in the nation this year, increasing by 1.1% or 1,370,163 people. Domestic migration of 867,935 people and international migration of 414,740 people were the biggest contributions to the growth.The U-Haul report also notes that demand for equipment out of California, Illinois and New York remained strong in 2022, as more people opted to leave areas of the West Coast, Northeast and Midwest. California and Illinois ranked 50th and 49th, respectively, for the third consecutive year, meaning those states saw the greatest net losses of one-way U-Haul trucks.

The U-Haul report ranking is determined by the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks to a state versus departing from that state, in a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul truck transactions that occur annually across the U.S. and Canada.

Here are the 10 states people moved to the most in 2022.

1. Texas
2. Florida
3. South Carolina
4. North Carolina
5. Virginia
6. Tennessee
7. Arizona
8. Georgia
9. Ohio
10. Idaho

Patrick McCreless

The State

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Patrick McCreless is the Southeast service journalism editor for McClatchy, who leads and edits a team of six reporters in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi. The team writes about trending news of the day and topics that help readers in their daily lives and better informs them about their communities. He attended Jacksonville State University in Alabama and grew up in Tuscaloosa, AL.