Millennial Austinites may be growing tired of the city's consistently changing landscape: Austin has once again fallen out from the coveted No. 1 spot in SmartAsset's annual report of "Cities Attracting the Most Millennials" in 2025.
In fact, Austin barely scraped into the top 10 and ranked No. 9 this year, just like it did in SmartAsset's 2023 report.
The 2025 study dug into data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1-Year American Community Survey to determine the number of millennials who moved to 271 U.S. cities in 2023 (where the most recent data is available). Rankings were determined by the percentage of the total population of millennials who moved into each city in 2023.
A total of 103,738 millennial transplants landed in the capital of Texas in 2023, according to the study's findings, bringing the city's total millennial-age population to 395,776. That means about 41 percent of the city's entire population is made up of people aged between 25 and 44.
Breaking that down further, the report found that the number of millennials who moved to Austin from elsewhere in Travis County was more than double those who moved from other Texas counties: 55,591 and 21,403, respectively. In addition, 19,890 millennials moved in from a different state, and 6,854 moved in from abroad.
SmartAsset also unveiled that the average household income of a millennial Austinite is $91,501 annually, and their total median housing costs add up to $1,828 per month.
While the report doesn't give a reason why millennials favored other cities over Austin, the city's housing prices, job market, and family planning prospects can all have an influence.
"Millennials are often in their prime earning years, and many have young families, which may significantly impact the communities they join and leave," the study said.
In a separate 2024 report by commercial real estate platform CommercialCafe, Austin was crowned the No. 1 city for millennials.
Alexandria, Virginia, is the No. 1 millennial magnet for 2025 with the highest proportional influx of millennial transplants in 2023, at 12.67 percent. For context, Austin's share of new millennials was only 10.69 percent.
Austin was the highest ranked Texas city in the report, with Houston ranking second statewide but 51st overall. Houston had a far higher influx of millennial newcomers in 2023, at nearly 177,000 transplants, but the share of new millennials that moved in as a percentage of the total population was lower than Austin's, at just 7.7 percent.
The top 10 magnet cities for millennials in 2025 are:
- No. 1 – Alexandria, Virginia
- No. 2 – Cambridge, Massachusetts
- No. 3 – Denver, Colorado
- No. 4 – Sandy Springs, Georgia
- No. 5 – Seattle, Washington
- No. 6 – Sunnyvale, California
- No. 7 – Santa Clara, California
- No. 8 – Arlington, Virginia
- No. 9 – Austin, Texas
- No. 10 – Orlando, Florida
