Just 11.9% of Americans moved last year, a 60-year low

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Another casualty of the recession and the housing bust: our national mobility.

The percentage of Americans who changed residences last year fell to the lowest since the government began keeping records in 1948, the Census Bureau reported today.

Just 11.9% of the population moved last year, down from 13.2% in 2007. The rate was as high as 16.1% as recently as 2000.

Most moves in 2008 were from one home or apartment to another in the same county. Just 1.6% of Americans moved between states, down from 1.7% the previous year and 3.1% in 2000.

With the crash in housing prices many people naturally are unable or unwilling to sell their homes. And with unemployment rising nationwide there is less incentive for people to move in search of better jobs.

But the national mobility rate has been in general decline since the mid-1980s. Americans moved much more frequently in the 1950s and 1960s, when the percentage of the population changing residences routinely was around 20% each year, Census data show.

-- Tom Petruno