Moving to Alberta stays hot as Calgary leads the way
Alberta might not be calling anymore, but that didn’t slow the rate of movement to the Wild Rose province in 2023, with its biggest city leading the way.
According to recent data from moving company U-Haul, do-it-yourself movers arriving in Calgary accounted for more than 52% of all one-way U-Haul traffic in and out of the market, with 48% departures in 2023, making that city the leading destination.
U-Haul calculates growth cities by each city’s net gain or loss of one-way equipment from
customer transactions in a calendar year.
The last time Calgary cracked U-Haul’s top-25 growth city was in 2021, when it ranked fifth on the U-Haul Growth Index.
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“People are moving to Calgary because of the high wages and low taxes,” Razmin Mansoub, president of the U-Haul Company of Southern Alberta, said in a statement.
“It’s an affordable city with lots of job growth. British Columbia and Ontario are becoming almost unlivable, pushing more people into Alberta. The living costs are a huge factor.”
Even though housing is known to cost less in Alberta than in BC and Ontario, Calgary did rank higher when it came to the cost of basic necessities, according to the latest Market Basket Measure from Statistics Canada.
In Alberta, 51.1% of all one-way U-Haul customers in 2023 were arriving in the province, while 48.9% were leaving.
Compared to 2022, this is a 1.6% increase in arrivals versus departures.
“Calgary and Edmonton each saw significantly fewer people leaving their cities, which catapulted them in the growth city rankings with considerable net gains of DIY movers,” U-Haul said in a statement.
One-way U-Haul customers arriving in Calgary fell 4% from 2022, but total departures fell 13% as overall moving traffic slowed.
“With fewer residents leaving, arrivals accounted for a greater segment of the overall DIY moving population in Calgary,” reads a statement from U-Haul.
“This led to a sizeable net gain of U-Haul customers as Calgary went from a net-loss city in 2022 to the country’s biggest growth city in 2023.”
Calgary is one of three Alberta markets on U-Haul’s top 25 growth cities list, joining Edmonton, ranked at number three, and Camrose, which came in at 25.
In Edmonton, 50.4% of one-way U-Haul customers were arrivals.
While U-Haul migration trends do not correlate directly to population or economic growth, the company said its growth index can gauge how well provinces and cities are attracting and maintaining residents.
Recent data from Statistics Canada also shows that the trend of moving to Alberta was at a high in 2023.
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