/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/57340629/shutterstock_592619654.0.jpg)
Seattle is growing at an incredible pace, with around a thousand people moving here per week since 2010. 2016, for the third year in a row, sent a record-breaking number of people to King County, with more than 76,000 moving in from out of state. But where are all those people coming from?
In recent years, the top answer has stayed the same: California. But the top ten shifts a little bit from year to year.
The Seattle Times’s FYI Guy, aka Gene Balk, took a look at Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) data from 2016—and again, California took the top spot for people getting newly minted, in-state driver's licenses in King County.
The top three are even the same as they were for a smaller time period in 2015: California, Texas, and Oregon. But there’s a new addition to the top five in Florida, nestling right behind Oregon. Floridians accounted for more than 3,000 imports to King County in 2016.
Statewide, Florida doesn’t make the top five for 2016—that’s rounded out by Arizona and Idaho.
Looking at more recent Department of Licensing data, Florida continues to send residents to Seattle at a record pace. In September 2017, Florida even outpaced Oregon, sending more than 337 people here within a single month. California outpaced everyone by more than threefold that month, though, with 1,724 new Washington licenses going to people from the Sunshine State. Oregon and Illinois took up third with 331 each.
Outside of King County, California still sent the most people to Washington State as a whole in September 2017, but Oregon came in second with 2,294. That’s followed by Texas and then, yes, Florida.