Census data are useful but they are updated annually and with a lengthy lag. During the pandemic, our economists searched for a source to track migration on a real-time basis. It turns out the solution was in our backyard.
Moody's Analytics has partnered with Equifax for consumer credit data for decades. Equifax provides delinquencies, foreclosures and balances for a variety of credit products, including mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. They also track when consumers change their billing address. Anonymizing the change-of-address data and aggregating up to states and metro areas has allowed us to update migration patterns on a far-more timely basis, and we are now making the data available in our Data Buffet interface.
The Equifax data track the annual census figures closely and are available between six months and just over a year before official figures are reported. The correlation coefficient between migration rates based on Equifax data and those reported by the Census Bureau is consistently above 0.9, indicating that the more timely figures predict the census data with extremely high accuracy. Based on our testing, the Equifax data do a significantly better job of anticipating census figures than the few other sources of timely domestic migration data that exist.
Moody's Analytics migration database tracks migration between metro areas and states. The database includes net migration into a metro area from more than 400 of its peers, and net migration from each metro area to the same set of 400 counterparts. Seven age cohorts provide even deeper detail. The data go back to 2005, have a monthly frequency, and are available by API and our Data Buffet interface for easy downloading , charting, mapping and scheduling.
Products
& Services