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Each summer brings a familiar sense of malaise for young D.C. professionals, as a sizable chunk of their friends decamp for New York or grad school or elsewhere, never to return. The District sometimes feels full of 22- and 23-year-olds on a two-year layover between college and whatever comes next.
But just how transient is D.C.? Over at Greater Greater Washington, Topher Mathews takes a look at the numbers, inspired by the recent spat over whether the District is a good sports town.
On the simplest metric, D.C. is indeed more transient than other big cities—-a far higher percentage of D.C. residents moved from another state in the past year:
| D.C. | 9.1% |
| Boston (Suffolk County) | 5.9% |
| Philadelphia | 3.2% |
| Atlanta | 4.8% |
| Chicago | 3.2% |
| Baltimore City | 3.0% |
| New York City | 2.8% |
| … Manhattan | 6.2% |
But “another state” is kind of a funny metric for a town whose suburbs are exclusively in other states. And if, for non-D.C. cities, you add in people moving from other counties within the same state, suddenly D.C. doesn’t look so exceptionally transient:
| D.C. | 9.1% |
| Boston | 10.0% |
| Philadelphia | 4.6% |
| Atlanta | 11.0% |
| Chicago | 4.1% |
| Baltimore | 6.7% |
| New York City | 4.9% |
| … Manhattan | 9.1% |
Mathews also breaks the numbers down by age group. Check out his post for the full rundown.