# Romania is moving, one commune at a time

*Internal migration · 3,181 localities · 1992–2025*

Every year since 1990, Romania's National Institute of Statistics has counted how many people registered a new home address in each locality and how many left it — including people arriving from or leaving to another country. The difference between arrivals and departures, set against population, is a net migration rate: who is growing, who is emptying out, year by year. The pattern is unambiguous — big cities no longer grow through migration; the communes ringing them do, sometimes with more than half of today's population made up of net newcomers accumulated over 34 years. And a handful of communes in three counties along the Prut river went through explosive, one-year population jumps of over 100 percent, one after another.

- **+56.3‰** — average net migration rate in the communes ringing Timișoara, 2015–2024, while the city itself lost 10.2‰ a year
- **86.6%** — of today's population of Dumbrăvița (Timiș county) is the net migration surplus accumulated since 1992
- **+1,639‰** — net migration rate of Moșna (Iași county) in 2014 — its population nearly tripled in a single year
- **6** — communes across three border counties (Iași, Botoșani, Vaslui) where population exploded and then corrected, in successive waves from 2014 to today

The interactive map, with a profile for every locality, is at [mariuscomper.uk/tara-care-se-muta/en/](https://mariuscomper.uk/tara-care-se-muta/en/).

## The city stands still. The commune next to it grows

For the country's 13 largest cities, average net migration rate of the city compared with its neighbouring communes, 2015–2024:

- **Timișoara** — city −10.2‰, neighbouring communes +56.3‰
- **Brașov** — city +0.2‰, neighbouring communes +39.4‰
- **Iași** — city +2.6‰, neighbouring communes +39.4‰
- **Cluj-Napoca** — city +0.7‰, neighbouring communes +37.5‰
- **București** — city +2.8‰, neighbouring communes +35.0‰
- **Craiova** — city −7.0‰, neighbouring communes +31.3‰
- **Oradea** — city −2.9‰, neighbouring communes +30.0‰
- **Constanța** — city −3.5‰, neighbouring communes +22.3‰
- **Sibiu** — city −3.0‰, neighbouring communes +19.9‰
- **Târgu Mureș** — city −6.0‰, neighbouring communes +16.2‰
- **Arad** — city −3.7‰, neighbouring communes +12.9‰
- **Ploiești** — city −7.4‰, neighbouring communes +10.8‰
- **Galați** — city −1.4‰, neighbouring communes +9.7‰

## The magnets (top 12, cumulative net rate 1992–2025 set against 2025 population)

1. **Dumbrăvița** (commune, Timiș county) — +866.2‰, 22,699 residents (2025)
2. **Giroc** (commune, Timiș county) — +840.6‰, 27,328 residents (2025)
3. **Berceni** (commune, Ilfov county) — +822.9‰, 12,159 residents (2025)
4. **Moșnița Nouă** (commune, Timiș county) — +821.1‰, 20,184 residents (2025)
5. **Bragadiru** (town, Ilfov county) — +815.4‰, 36,914 residents (2025)
6. **Florești** (commune, Cluj county) — +814.0‰, 55,766 residents (2025)
7. **Chiajna** (commune, Ilfov county) — +796.5‰, 40,647 residents (2025)
8. **Sânpetru** (commune, Brașov county) — +790.4‰, 13,754 residents (2025)
9. **Valea Lupului** (commune, Iași county) — +784.0‰, 17,565 residents (2025)
10. **Miroslava** (commune, Iași county) — +770.7‰, 33,726 residents (2025)
11. **Malu Mare** (commune, Dolj county) — +770.3‰, 8,943 residents (2025)
12. **Rediu** (commune, Iași county) — +754.9‰, 10,020 residents (2025)

## Emptying out (top 12)

1. **Boișoara** (commune, Vâlcea county) — −956.6‰, 1,106 residents (2025)
2. **Ciudanovița** (commune, Caraș-Severin county) — −821.4‰, 543 residents (2025)
3. **Bărbulețu** (commune, Dâmbovița county) — −759.7‰, 1,968 residents (2025)
4. **Întregalde** (commune, Alba county) — −748.1‰, 532 residents (2025)
5. **Bălan** (town, Harghita county) — −705.0‰, 7,208 residents (2025)
6. **Perișani** (commune, Vâlcea county) — −681.9‰, 2,062 residents (2025)
7. **Lunca Cernii de Jos** (commune, Hunedoara county) — −646.2‰, 783 residents (2025)
8. **Mogoș** (commune, Alba county) — −632.9‰, 692 residents (2025)
9. **Târlișua** (commune, Bistrița-Năsăud county) — −609.3‰, 3,079 residents (2025)
10. **Bisoca** (commune, Buzău county) — −600.8‰, 2,262 residents (2025)
11. **Jina** (commune, Sibiu county) — −597.5‰, 3,506 residents (2025)
12. **Odăile** (commune, Buzău county) — −591.9‰, 615 residents (2025)

## The localities where population exploded in a single year

1. **Moșna** (commune, Iași county), 2014 — +1639.4‰, +3,405 people
2. **Grajduri** (commune, Iași county), 2014 — +925.6‰, +3,668 people
3. **Bogdana** (commune, Vaslui county), 2024 — +664.6‰, +981 people
4. **Grajduri** (commune, Iași county), 2013 — +591.8‰, +1,508 people
5. **Ferești** (commune, Vaslui county), 2023 — +558.5‰, +1,174 people
6. **Cozmești** (commune, Iași county), 2024 — +511.8‰, +1,775 people
7. **Hănești** (commune, Botoșani county), 2021 — +438.6‰, +904 people
8. **Adășeni** (commune, Botoșani county), 2023 — +395.4‰, +565 people
9. **Vârfu Câmpului** (commune, Botoșani county), 2018 — +384.0‰, +1,386 people
10. **Bogdana** (commune, Vaslui county), 2025 — +375.1‰, +939 people
11. **Hănești** (commune, Botoșani county), 2022 — +369.2‰, +1,126 people
12. **Grozești** (commune, Iași county), 2025 — +333.5‰, +583 people

## A methodological story: sometimes the population map is the map of a law, not of housing

Moșna and Grajduri (Iași) nearly triple their registered population in 2014–2016. Scânteia (Iași) doubles, then triples, between 2016 and 2022. Ripiceni (Botoșani) doubles its population in 2016–2018. Bogdana and Ferești (Vaslui) do the same in 2023–2025 — the most recent wave, still under way. INS explicitly warns, in the methodology of its locality-level population matrix (POP107D), that some demographic jumps — including at Ripiceni and Scânteia, named directly — were influenced by the immigration of people born in the Republic of Moldova, most plausibly linked to the procedure for reacquiring Romanian citizenship, which requires a declared home address in Romania.

## Method and limits

The source is INS, TEMPO-Online: matrices POP307A (arrivals with a new home address, including international migration) and POP308A (departures with a new home address, including international migration), by county and locality, 1990–2025; and POP107D (population by domicile, as of 1 January), 1992–2026. The net rate is 1000 × (Arrivals − Departures) / Population. "Domicile" does not mean actual residence. The cumulative net rate divides the sum of net migration across all available years by the 2025 population. Neighbour geometry comes from SIRUTA (geo-spatial.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, ANCPI).

Source: National Institute of Statistics, TEMPO-Online (POP307A, POP308A, POP107D), accessed 9 September 2026. [Versiunea în română](https://mariuscomper.uk/tara-care-se-muta/index.md)