Seattle is, to a large extent, a city of transplants. That’s nothing new. In fact, people born outside of Washington have made up the majority of the city’s population throughout its recorded history.
Even so, born-and-bred Washingtonians may be increasingly few and far between in Seattle.
After more than a decade of tremendous growth through migration from other states and countries, Seattle now has its lowest percentage of people born in-state in nearly 100 years.
New census data shows in 2022, only about 259,000 city residents were born in Washington — slightly less than 35 percent of the 749,000 total population. That’s the lowest percentage since the 1930 census, when Seattle was still a very young city. In that year, 31 percent of the city’s population was born in Washington.
The peak years were from 1960 through 1980, when roughly 44 percent of Seattleites were born in-state. Over the following three decades, that figure fell very slowly, hitting 39 percent in 2010. But since then, the decline has accelerated, dropping to just under 35 percent last year.
Census tract data shows in nine of Seattle’s 177 tracts, born-and-bred Washingtonians made up at least 50 percent of the residents in 2022. These neighborhoods were all in West and North Seattle, and were residential areas made up primarily of owner-occupied single-family homes.
In West Seattle’s Genesee/North Admiral neighborhood, 55.5 percent of residents were born in Washington, the city’s highest percentage. In this census tract, two-thirds of homes were owner-occupied, and nearly 90 percent were single-family homes. Most residents (58 percent) were married, and the median age of 39 was a little higher than the citywide median of 35. It’s also an affluent neighborhood, with a median household income of $155,000.
A little south of Genesee, the Gatewood area ranked No. 2, at 54.5 percent. North Seattle’s Broadview neighborhood, just north of Carkeek Park, was third at around 54 percent.
The other areas where at least half the residents were born in Washington include West Seattle’s Arbor Heights, Arroyo Heights/Endolyne and the northern tip of North Admiral, and North Seattle’s Hawthorne Hills, Laurelhurst and the northern part of Haller Lake.
At the other end of the spectrum, there were 17 Seattle census tracts where less than 20 percent of residents were born in-state in 2022. Nearly all of these — there’s one exception — were located in Central Seattle, in areas where most people are renters in multiunit buildings.
The eastern part of South Lake Union, around the REI flagship store, had Seattle’s lowest share of residents born in Washington, at just 11 percent. Census data shows 100 percent of the people who live here are renters, and 100 percent of the housing is multiunit apartment buildings. It’s a young area, with a median age of 28, and a slight majority (50.5 percent) had moved into their current home in the past 12 months. Only about 6 percent of residents were married.
Two other areas were just fractionally higher, both with around 11 percent born in Washington. These include the northwestern section of Belltown, where the Olympic Sculpture Park is located, and in the heart of Capitol Hill, in the tract that includes Cal Anderson Park.
For those Seattle residents born outside of Washington, the Census Bureau provides data on which region of the country they were born in. As it turns out, this part of Capitol Hill is also Seattle’s hot spot for Southern transplants — 27 percent of this tract’s residents were born in the South, the highest percentage in the city.
And the one exception I mentioned earlier, the area outside of Central Seattle where less than one fifth of residents were born in-state? It’s South Seattle’s Columbia City, where just under 20 percent of residents were born in-state. The neighborhood is similar to those in Central Seattle in that most residents (68 percent) were renters, and 70 percent lived in multiunit buildings.
The data on where people were born shows Columbia City is also Seattle’s No. 1 neighborhood for expat Midwesterners — 25.5 percent of residents were born in the nation’s heartland.
The top Seattle neighborhood for folks from the Northeast is the eastern side of Uptown (the tract spills over into South Lake Union), with 18 percent of residents born in that part of the country. And for transplants from other Western states, eastern Capitol Hill (between Thomas and Roy streets) ranks No. 1, at 31 percent.
As scarce as born-and-bred Washingtonians have become in Seattle, it still can’t compare to the Klondike gold rush days, when hardly anyone was from here. Census data shows in 1900, 85 percent of Seattle residents were born out-of-state.
