Scholars were concerned about this declining residential mobility because it may signal a lack of fluidity in the labour market and have negative repercussions on the macroeconomy and workers' social mobility (Molloy et al., 2017 Winship, 2015). There has been a steady decline in residential mobility and migration in the past 30 years in the United States (Frey, 2014 Kaplan & Schulhofer-Wohl, 2017). Residential mobility also has wide-ranging implications for the broader society because it affects the growth of communities and drives changes in the demographic compositions of communities, cities and regions (Clark, 2017). It is crucial to understand residential mobility because it enables families and individuals to achieve better housing quality, residential environments and economic opportunities. To fill the gap in the literature, we examine how mobility intentions have changed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A study in Spain reported that approximately 10% of the population moved during the lockdown and analysed the triggers and motivations of these moves (Duque-Calvache et al., 2020), but this study did not compare mobility intentions or behaviours before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. However, little research has been done on whether people consider residential moves as an adaptation to the changes caused by the pandemic. These dramatic changes in economic and family lives would create discrepancies between households' needs and their current housing and community environments. Recent research has documented the impact of the pandemic on work life, economic conditions (Béland et al., 2020), mental health (Brodeur et al., 2021) and domestic violence (Leslie & Wilson, 2020).

The spread of COVID-19 and the lockdown policies have led to various economic, social and health consequences, drawing popular and scholarly attention. The results demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic has not only posed obstacles that lowered moving intentions but also has created new needs and desires for moving. These trends were also reflected in Google searches for moving services, which exhibited an initial decline followed by a long-term increase. Thoughts about moving in with family or parents increased by almost 50% during the pandemic. Intentions to move through housing purchases and rentals briefly declined at the beginning of the pandemic but then surpassed their normal levels in the following months. Results show that thoughts about temporary relocation surged at the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic and then experienced a long-term decrease. Using Google Trends data, we conducted a time-series analysis to assess the transitory, short-term and long-lasting changes in various types of mobility intentions since the pandemic. We theorized how the pandemic could influence intentions of making different types of residential moves.

These disruptions can trigger new residential needs and preferences, but little research has been done regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on moving intentions. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted people's lives through economic challenges, closure of worksites and schools and increased health risks.

Google mobility data