Where Wake County Movers Come From (IRS Data)

Wake County gained a net 3,843 tax-filing households in the 2022–2023 IRS migration data — but that growth came entirely from out of state. Within North Carolina, Wake lost 3,149 households on net, mostly to Johnston, Harnett and Franklin counties. The data lags roughly two to three years behind the present.

What does this data actually measure?

It measures tax returns, not home sales. The IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) migration series matches Social Security numbers on consecutive years’ returns and reports, for each county pair, the number of returns that moved, the number of individuals (exemptions) on those returns, and the adjusted gross income (AGI) reported on the destination-year return. A return is roughly a household, not necessarily a person and never a sale. This page describes filers who changed their county of residence — nothing here reflects home purchases, listings, or closings, and no figure on this page should be read as one.

The current release covers filing years 2022 and 2023, meaning it captures address changes made between filing a 2022 return and filing a 2023 return. Because the IRS builds and publishes this series roughly two to three years after the moves happen, it is a historical record, not a snapshot of current conditions. Treat every number below as describing 2022–2023, not today.

Where do Wake County movers come from?

Durham, Johnston and Mecklenburg sent the most tax filers into Wake County in 2022–2023, and out-of-state origins fill out most of the rest of the top ten. The table below ranks the ten counties with the largest recorded inflow into Wake.

Rank	Origin county	Returns in	Individuals	AGI ($k)
1	Durham, NC	3,599	5,610	283,980
2	Johnston, NC	1,999	3,461	116,020
3	Mecklenburg, NC	1,028	1,491	80,130
4	Guilford, NC	803	1,163	46,632
5	Orange, NC	758	1,118	55,246
6	Franklin, NC	726	1,337	47,282
7	Harnett, NC	653	1,145	34,350
8	Cumberland, NC	624	1,010	38,847
9	Pitt, NC	545	815	33,548
10	New Hanover, NC	524	707	36,490

Quarterly report

The quarterly report, when it publishes

Figures publish only when sourced and checked. Get the Wake County report the day it goes out.

Where do Wake County movers go?

The counties sending the most filers into Wake are, almost entirely, the same counties receiving the most filers leaving Wake. Durham and Johnston top both lists. The table below ranks the ten counties with the largest recorded outflow from Wake.

Rank	Destination county	Returns out	Individuals	AGI ($k)
1	Durham, NC	3,465	4,950	260,032
2	Johnston, NC	3,410	6,568	228,759
3	Harnett, NC	1,425	2,837	98,338
4	Franklin, NC	1,371	2,774	105,955
5	Mecklenburg, NC	1,225	1,708	89,371
6	Chatham, NC	704	1,397	110,018
7	New Hanover, NC	681	1,015	85,231
8	Guilford, NC	620	962	34,270
9	Orange, NC	583	903	51,723
10	Nash, NC	465	881	25,850

Eleven of the top twelve counties in each direction appear on both lists, and Durham is the largest flow either way and close to balanced — 3,599 returns in against 3,465 out. That overlap points to a lot of lateral movement within the Triangle and central NC, not one-directional flight from or to Wake.

Is Wake County gaining or losing households?

Both, depending on where you draw the line. Wake County’s overall net gain of 3,843 returns hides two opposite movements that cancel unevenly. Against other North Carolina counties, Wake is a net exporter of households. Against the rest of the country, it is a strong net importer.

Compared against	Returns in	Returns out	Net returns	Net AGI ($k)
Other NC counties	16,961	20,110	−3,149	−423,557
Other states	17,675	11,077	+6,598	+775,907
Wake County total	39,828	35,985	+3,843	+363,555

Average reported AGI ran close between directions: $84,797 per return moving in, $83,749 per return moving out. The county-level detail behind these totals is limited: 322 counties sent at least one filer to Wake in this window, and 236 received at least one filer from Wake, but the IRS suppresses any county pair with fewer than 20 returns and folds those moves into an unranked residual. The ranked tables above therefore understate the true number of small flows, particularly for distant or lightly populated counties.

Which counties gained or lost the most from moves with Wake?

Johnston and Harnett counties recorded the largest net losses to Wake by returns and by income; several out-of-state counties recorded the largest net gains from Wake, mostly in Florida, the New York metro area, and Northern Virginia.

Biggest net losses to Wake

County	Net returns	Net AGI ($k)
Johnston, NC	−1,411	−112,739
Harnett, NC	−772	−63,988
Brunswick, NC	−173	−35,964
New Hanover, NC	−157	−48,741
Nash, NC	−146	−6,173

Biggest net gains from Wake

County	Net returns
Pitt, NC	+197
Guilford, NC	+183
Fairfax, VA	+146
Queens, NY	+140
Miami-Dade, FL	+139
Broward, FL	+136
Durham, NC	+134
Maricopa, AZ	+130
Nassau, NY	+128
Middlesex, NJ	+117

Why are households leaving Wake for Johnston, Harnett and Franklin?

The IRS data cannot answer that directly — it records a change of county on a tax return, not a reason for it. What can be said is that the pattern is consistent with a cost-driven move outward: the counties receiving the largest net outflow from Wake (Johnston, Harnett, Franklin) sit immediately adjacent to it, while the counties supplying Wake’s net gain sit outside North Carolina entirely. Chatham is a partial exception worth naming on its own terms — filers leaving Wake for Chatham reported average AGI of $156,276 per return, well above the $132,028 average for filers arriving from Chatham, which does not fit a simple cost-driven story and is left here as an open question rather than an explained one.

Any explanation involving remote work, retirement, school assignment, or housing cost has to come from a separate source with its own citation. This page states what moved and where; it does not state why.

What can’t this data tell you?

Four limits matter enough to repeat plainly. First, this is county-level data only — there is no neighborhood, ZIP code, or subdivision breakdown in this IRS series at any level of detail, so this page cannot say which part of Wake County is gaining or losing filers, only the county as a whole. Second, county pairs with fewer than 20 returns are suppressed and grouped into an unranked “other flows” total, so the ranked tables above understate small or unusual flows. Third, AGI is reported in thousands of dollars and reflects the return filed for the destination year, not income at the time of the move. Fourth, this is filers, not people generally — a household that does not file a federal return, or that moves without a job or income change prompting one, may not register the same way in this series.

How is this data built?

The source is the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) county-to-county migration data, covering filing years 2022 and 2023. The SOI program matches primary Social Security numbers appearing on a tax return filed for one year against the same taxpayer’s return filed the following year. When the county of the mailing address on file changes between the two returns, that return is counted as one outbound migration from the prior county and one inbound migration to the new county. Three figures are published per county pair: the number of returns (a proxy for households), the number of individuals (exemptions claimed on those returns, a proxy for people), and the total adjusted gross income reported on the later return, in thousands of dollars.

This method has known gaps worth stating rather than hiding. It only captures taxpayers who filed in both years, so it misses non-filers, some low-income households, and some households that changed filing status between years. It resolves moves to the county of the address on record, not to a specific neighborhood or ZIP code — no drill-down below county level exists in this source. And, as above, the IRS withholds any county-pair cell with fewer than 20 returns for taxpayer privacy, replacing it with an aggregated residual rather than a suppressed zero. Every figure on this page is a return-level or county-level total from that published series, for the 2022–2023 filing-year window specifically — a later or earlier release of the same series will show different numbers, and no number here should be assumed current beyond that window.

Who should not rely on this report?

Anyone pricing a specific home, a specific street, or a specific ZIP code should not use this page — it has no data below the county level and never will, because the source itself does not go there. Anyone needing current migration should not treat this as up to date; the underlying moves are two to three years old by the time the IRS publishes them, and nothing here should be quoted as describing conditions in 2025 or 2026. And anyone looking for a stated reason behind a specific household’s move should look elsewhere — this dataset records an address change on a tax return, not a motive, and this page has been written to avoid implying otherwise.

For where these counties sit in the Triangle, see the Triangle overview. For guidance aimed at people planning a move into or out of the area, see Triangle relocation guidance. For the broader market context this migration data sits within, see the market overview.

More market reporting

About the author

Cameron Smith writes Move Up NC’s real estate guidance for Cary, Morrisville and the North Carolina Triangle.

Editorial note: This article reports market data for a defined period and area. Figures describe closed sales in that window and are not a forecast or a valuation of any individual property.