6 Reasons New Jerseyans Are Leaving the State They Grew Up In
New Jersey has led United Van Lines’ National Movers Study in outbound moves for eight straight years.
Ask the movers why, and the weather doesn’t always make the list.
These are the reasons New Jerseyans are leaving the state they grew up in.
Note: This is general information, not tax or financial advice. Tax rules and dollar amounts are subject to change.
1. Property Tax Bills
New Jerseyans paid an average residential property tax bill of $10,570 in 2025, according to state Department of Community Affairs data reported by New Jersey 101.5.
The 2024 average was $10,095.
The bill rose about 4.7%, nearly $500, in a year, on top of an average that had already passed $10,000.
Monmouth University’s polling has found property taxes to be the top issue residents name on almost every survey since 2009, and in its 2024 survey 39% put them first.
Few people move over one bill, but a bill that lands north of $10,000 and rises every year changes the math on staying.
2. Out-of-State College
New Jersey’s kids start leaving at 18.
Of the 73,273 recent New Jersey high school graduates who started college in fall 2022, 31,294 enrolled out of state, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Few come the other way.
Just 5,420 out-of-state freshmen enrolled in New Jersey that fall.
That net loss of 25,874 students was the largest of any state in the country.
Every one of those 31,294 students was a New Jersey resident fresh out of high school.
Four years away gives many of them a head start on a life somewhere else.
3. Housing Costs
A median single-family home in New Jersey sold for $644,500 in August 2026, up 3.1% from a year earlier, according to New Jersey Realtors.
Homes went under contract in 33 days on average, with 2.9 months of supply on the market.
Sellers hold the cards.
A Rutgers-Eagleton poll in April 2025 found 51% of New Jerseyans call their housing costs unaffordable.
A quarter of them spend more than half their monthly income on rent or a mortgage.
Among adults 18 to 34, the poll’s age breakdown put that share at a third.
Renters had it worse, with 34% calling housing not at all affordable, against 11% of homeowners.
A $644,500 median-priced home is a heavy number for a buyer who grew up in the state.
Cost of living tops the list of reasons New Jerseyans planning to leave give pollsters.
Psst! How much do you know about the tax side of moving out of New Jersey? Flip through these cards and see how many you can get right.
4. Rising Utility Bills
New Jerseyans who’d like to leave point to the cost of living more than anything else, according to Monmouth University’s 2024 poll of residents considering a move.
In that poll, 43% called it the single most important factor.
Another 52% listed it among their top reasons.
That’s 95% of them.
Electric rates rose sharply in 2025, adding a fresh source of that complaint.
The state Board of Public Utilities announced supply-rate increases that took effect June 1, 2025: PSE&G customers saw 17.24%, Atlantic City Electric 17.23%, and JCP&L 20.20%.
That extra $22.67 to $28.02 shows up on the typical 650-kilowatt-hour bill every month.
The board pointed to the regional grid operator’s capacity auction.
The state’s Rate Counsel said that auction cleared at its highest price ever.
5. Retirement
Retirement drives many of the state’s outbound moves.
United Van Lines’ National Movers Study has ranked New Jersey first for outbound moves eight years running.
The study counts only the company’s household moves, not the full universe of relocations.
Its 2025 edition put 62% of New Jersey moves as outbound.
Among those leaving, 25.2% named retirement as the reason, according to ROI-NJ’s report on the study.
Nationally, retirement drove only 14% of interstate moves.
New Jersey’s retirement share nearly doubles the national rate.
A retiree with a paid-off house still owes the state’s five-figure average tax bill every year.
Pension income rarely keeps pace with that bill.
A retiree who sells a New Jersey home to fund the move faces one more state tax step at the closing table.
New Jersey’s So-Called Exit Tax
New Jersey’s exit tax is an estimated income tax payment collected at closing, not a separate tax on leaving.
It applies to a seller who moves out of New Jersey on or after the day of the closing.
It also applies to anyone who had already left the state before that day.
The Division of Taxation figures it as the gain on the sale times the state’s top income tax rate of 10.75%.
The payment can’t be less than 2% of the sale price.
That 2% floor applies whether or not you made a profit.
File a New Jersey nonresident return, or Form A-3128, and any overpayment comes back as a refund.
6. Family Ties
Family was the top reason New Jersey’s actual movers gave United Van Lines in 2025, cited by 25.5%, a hair ahead of retirement, according to ROI-NJ’s report on the study.
Nationally, proximity to family drove 29% of interstate moves in the same study.
The Florida numbers show how that pull plays out.
Florida drew about 35,000 New Jerseyans in the 2022-23 IRS migration data while sending 14,000 the other way, by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s read of the numbers.
That’s a net gain of about 21,000 people for Florida in a single year.
Top Destinations
Nine in 10 people who leave New Jersey don’t head to Florida.
Roughly 214,800 residents left New Jersey for another state in 2024, and about 150,800 came in, according to Census Bureau data as compiled by USAFacts.
That’s a net loss of roughly 63,900.
Pennsylvania took in roughly 38,500 of them, New York about 36,000, and Florida came third at about 22,600.
The top destination is a bridge toll away.
Florida drew about one in ten of the people who left.
Who Moves In
New York sends more new residents to New Jersey than any other state.
Roughly 56,800 people moved from New York to New Jersey in 2024, against about 36,000 going the other way, per the same Census data USAFacts compiled.
That gap put more than 20,000 extra people on New Jersey’s side of the ledger in a single year.
United Van Lines found 21% of its inbound New Jersey moves in 2025 were people ages 18 to 34.
The company calls New Jersey a launch state for young careers.
Add international arrivals, and New Jersey’s population keeps growing.
The Census Bureau’s January 2026 estimates put New Jersey’s population up 41,861 in the year to July 2025, the 10th-largest numeric gain of any state.
Not the Weather
Winters get blamed for the state’s moving trucks.
The polling doesn’t back that up.
A 2019 Garden State Initiative and Fairleigh Dickinson University poll asked residents planning to leave to rate 11 factors.
Weather ranked eighth.
Public transportation ranked 10th.
Property taxes and cost of living topped the list; government corruption and crime followed close behind.
Fewer residents want out than they used to.
Monmouth’s 2024 poll found 48% of residents would like to leave someday, down from 59% in 2022.
Only 28% called an actual move very likely.
Among residents 55 and older, the share who want out fell to 37%, against 57% of adults under 35.
Income Lost to Other States
New Jersey lost a net $2.8 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2022-23 tax year, by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s tally of IRS migration data.
That was down from $5.2 billion the year before.
Since the 2004-05 tax year, the running total tops $48 billion.
New Jersey sent $2.96 billion in adjusted gross income to Florida and $1.56 billion to Pennsylvania that year, gross outflows before any money flowing back.
Pennsylvania sent about $1.39 billion back to New Jersey the same year, narrowing that swap to a net of roughly $170 million.
New York breaks that pattern.
New Jersey sent $2.97 billion in income across the Hudson that year and took in more, for a net gain of $2.15 billion from its neighbor.
9 Things That Confuse Everyone Who Moves to New Jersey
New Jersey packs more people into a square mile than any other state, then splits them across 564 separate town governments.
Two neighborhoods a mile apart can run on different trash days, tax bills, and rulebooks.
9 Things That Confuse Everyone Who Moves to New Jersey
9 New Jersey Myths Residents Are Sick of Correcting
Much of New Jersey’s reputation comes from people who never lived there.
Out-of-staters still repeat myths locals could correct in one sentence.
