Figures show that the number of people who moved has dropped sharply last year, contrary to rumors.

New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Wednesday showed that the proportion of people who moved last year plummeted to the lowest level it has tracked in 73 years. This is contrary to the popular saying that people generally leave the city to escape COVID restrictions or to find a more rural lifestyle.

“Millennials living in New York City do not constitute the world,” said Thomas Cook, a population consultant in Connecticut. “My millennial daughter’s friend lives in Williamsburg, and dozens of people have gone home. It feels like the world has suddenly changed, but in fact, it’s not surprising.

The Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Census reports that 8.4% of US residents (more than 27 million people) said they moved in the past year.

In contrast, from 2019 to 2020, 9.3% of US residents moved. Three years ago this figure was 17%.

According to the Associated Press, the COVID pandemic may cause people to postpone marriage or childbirth and other life events that often lead to moving. However, William Fry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said this reduction is part of the decline in immigration in the United States over the decades.

“These figures show that many people are not moving or moving slowly,” Frey said. “But this is a long-term trend.”

The pattern of movement only increased once last year, which occurred in long-distance movies, from one state to another, rather than moving within a state or a country. Frey said the 4.3 million people moved to another state may be due to the pandemic.

For more reports from the Associated Press, please see below.

Demographic expert Andrew Beveridge used address change data to show that although people moved out of New York at the height of the pandemic, especially in wealthy communities, these communities recovered their numbers only a few months later. In terms of the country as a whole, Beveridge said he was not surprised by the decline in immigration.

“The same thing happened during the financial crisis. No one moved. No one got married. No one had children,” said Beveridge, a professor of sociology at Queens College and Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York. “All demographic changes are coming to an abrupt end.”

Other factors that cause Americans to stay where they are is the aging of the population, because older people are less likely to move compared with young people; the ability to telecommute, which allows some workers to change jobs without moving; demographers say , Rising house prices and rents keep some potential movers in place.

Mary Craigle, director of the Montana Bureau of Research and Information Services, said: “I think the boom in remote work is an important reason due to the COVID and economic shock.”

Since 20% of American residents moved in 1985, American mobility has been declining. It was a time when young adults of the baby boom generation started their careers, married and started a family. In contrast, according to an analysis done by Frey last year, millennials are now in the same age group as the baby boomers of the mid-1980s, but they are trapped in place due to high housing costs and underemployment.

Advances in telecommunications and transportation have led to decades of decline in U.S. mobility. Today, people can remotely receive education, work, and visit family and friends. Cook, an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut, said that in the second half of the last century, the highway system allowed people to work 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home without having to get close for work.

He said that decades of rising economic insecurity have also reduced the mobility of American residents, because “when there is insecurity, people will cherish what they already have.”

The slowdown in U.S. population mobility is part of the recent stagnation of U.S. population dynamics. The 2020 Census shows that the U.S. has grown by only 7.4% in the past ten years, which is the slowest rate of growth since 1930 to 1940. Earlier this week, the Census Bureau revealed that the US population center had moved only 11.8 miles (19 kilometers), the smallest movement in 100 years.