Study Says Migrating Millennials Prefer These Two North Texas Cities

Who’s surprised to see Frisco and Dallas as havens for Millennials? You shouldn’t be. They’re no longer the places where Millennials’ parents have gone on to settle down.

Millennials are settling in the two cities as well.

A new SmartAsset analysis makes that point: Frisco ranked sixth and Dallas 11th among top cities where Millennials, a generation that grew up in the digital age, are moving. The fifth annual study analyzed Census Bureau data on migration patterns of people between the ages of 25 and 39.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and primarily after the Great Recession of 2007 and 2009, Millennials have been leaving the nation’s largest cities en masse. They’re ending up in Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Austin, and Colorado Springs, all tech hubs.

Millennials are flowing out mostly out of New York City, which lost a net of almost 40,000 in 2019. The second-largest outflow came from Chicago, with a net decrease of more than 11,000.

For the second consecutive year, Texas ranked first as the state with the highest net migration. More than 187,000 Millennials-age people moved in while nearly 154,000 left, according to 2019 data.

The Frisco Millennials population grew by 9.15 percent with a net influx of 3,516 from out of state. Millennials comprise 19.16 percent of Frisco’s overall population, which is 38,419 out of 200,513 residents. Dallas had a net gain of 2,524 Millennials.

Other Texas cities in the top-25 are Austin fourth; Houston 18th; and San Antonio (27th). Austin gained 5,686 Millennials.

If they’re coming for jobs, a new study found that Dallas has risen to third among U.S. cities in tech job postings with 13,336. According to CompTIA and its analysis of job-posting data from Burning Glass Technologies Labor Insights, Dallas ranked behind New York and Washington, D.C.

Mark Cuban might have said it best at last month’s SXSW: Texas, particularly Dallas, is where it’s at for the wired generation. Cuban’s comments were aimed at business leaders, but they could also be applied to those who make up the labor pool.

“Put aside the tax element, you’ve got a great workforce, you’ve got a willing workforce that wants to work, people who like coming to the job every day. You’ve got a young, vibrant, educated community,” Cuban said.