U-Haul ranks shrinking California second for Gen Z net arrivals

A second-place rank is an ordering, or more precisely an ordering of net equipment flows. The midyear report sorts states by their net gain of one-way trucks, trailers and U-Box containers between July 2025 and June 2026 ^[3]. Fortune's account of it does not include the size of any state's gain. Each move is credited to the generation of whoever signs the contract, renters must be 18, and not every one-way rental is a permanent change of address ^[11]. The sample also leans older. Millennials and Gen X together account for more than 60% of U-Haul's one-way rentals ^[10], so Gen Z, boomers and everyone else combined make up less than 40% ^[19]. The Census Bureau puts California's population decline at 0.5% between April 2020 and July 2025 ^[1]. On a base of about 39.4 million, that is roughly 200,000 people ^[8][20].

U-Haul's own explanation is that Gen Z is moving toward densely populated markets with lots of colleges, entry-level jobs and apartments ^[7]. A second possibility is that many are going home. In 2025 a record one in three adults younger than 35 lived at home with their parents, and most of them had jobs ^[13]. In Greater Los Angeles, 20% of working adults share a home with their parents, according to one analysis cited by Fortune, against 6% in the Austin metro ^[14]. A move into a parent's house adds a resident and no lease. A third is that a rank built from a minority of U-Haul's customers tells you little about California's housing demand in either direction.

For a landlord, only the first explanation produces rent. Census figures for 2020 to 2024 put the median owner-occupied home in California at $734,700 and median gross rent at $2,036 a month ^[12]. A year of that rent is $24,432, so the median home costs about 30 years of median rent ^[21]. The comparison is crude, since the two medians describe different housing. According to a Bank of America study, 54% of those aged 18 to 27 contribute nothing to their housing costs ^[15].

The jobs data gives the first explanation its best support. The state's Employment Development Department counted 138,500 jobs added over the past year ^[16]. On an 18.2 million payroll base that is growth of about 0.8% ^[23], and the 39,400 the BLS reported for August alone works out to about 28% of that twelve-month total ^[22]. The Legislative Analyst's Office has warned that early-2026 job growth may have been overstated, and California's unemployment rate remains among the highest in the country ^[17].

We think the report shows California still ranks near the top for young movers, and leaves open whether they add paying households. The counter-thesis is that young workers drawn to the largest payroll count of any state ^[9] will form households once they are earning, wherever they sleep in the first year. That case gets stronger if the 2026 job gains hold up despite the LAO's warning, and weaker if moving home turns out to be the main reason Gen Z trucks head to California. Rising lease signings by under-25s in Los Angeles and the Bay Area would prove us wrong.