How it works
Every number here comes from matched IRS tax returns. A move counts when the filing address crosses a county or state boundary between the two filing years.
Where the numbers come from
The IRS Statistics of Income division publishes U.S. Population Migration Data each year. We use every release from 2013–14 to 2022–23 without changing the counts. We add rates, rankings and maps on top.
- 51states and DC
- ~3,150counties
- 10years of moves
- 2022–23newest year
People and households
A household is one tax return. People counts everyone on it: the filer, a spouse, and dependents.
Only tax returns matched between both filing years are covered. Non-filers and unmatched returns are excluded, so these figures do not represent the entire U.S. population. A mailing address may differ from someone's actual residence.
- Big headline numbers are always people.
- Trend charts count households and say so above the chart.
- Tables show both, labeled.
They can point different ways: Indiana gained 4,837 people in 2022–23 but lost 1,268 households.
What a year means
2022–23 means a return filed in 2023 was matched to one filed in 2022. State migration crosses a state boundary; county migration crosses a county boundary. Moves within the same county are not counted as migration here.
We don't show “up X% from last year.” Year-to-year changes in this data aren't reliable, so we show levels, rankings and 10-year trends instead.
The † years
The IRS changed how it processed this data in 2014–15, 2016–17 and 2022–23. Every trend chart marks them with a dotted line and †.
A jump right at a † line may be the method, not the movers. Compare years between the lines.
County charts also mark 2018–19 with ‡: small counts began being deleted rather than reassigned to similar categories. County figures across that disclosure-method change may not be comparable.
| Year | In per 1,000 households | Out per 1,000 households |
|---|---|---|
| 2013–14 | 25.9 | 27.7 |
| 2014–15 | 19.6 | 20.8 |
| 2015–16 | 25.6 | 25.9 |
| 2016–17 | 34.8 | 32.5 |
| 2017–18 | 27.8 | 26.4 |
| 2018–19 | 27.1 | 25.6 |
| 2019–20 | 30.2 | 26.1 |
| 2020–21 | 31.2 | 26.4 |
| 2021–22 | 31.1 | 26.3 |
| 2022–23 | 30.2 | 26.8 |
— and n/a mean different things
The IRS withheld this number. State flows require at least 10 returns; county flows require at least 20. Other IRS disclosure rules can also cause values to be withheld. A withheld value is not evidence of zero moves.
This number doesn't apply here. There's nothing to count, by definition. It's never used for a withheld value.
Income
We show average adjusted gross income reported on the second-year tax return for arriving and leaving households.
The IRS Migration Data Users Guide, section C.1, cautions that the filing address may not reflect where income was earned. Income can have been earned before the move or in more than one location. For example, returns filed in 2023 generally report income earned in 2022.
The two averages describe different groups of tax returns, not an income gain or loss caused by migration. We do not subtract them or show “net income.”
Moves abroad and within a state
Moves abroad are listed separately and never counted in net change.
State pages count only moves between states. County pages include moves from elsewhere in the same state, and always show that split.
Domestic net migration is not total population change. It excludes births, deaths, international migration and moves outside the matched-return coverage.
Download and cite
Every page has a citation and a CSV download of the tables it shows, for the year you're viewing. Withheld values are written as “withheld” and not-applicable values as “na”, never as blanks or zeros. For the complete dataset, use the IRS source files.
Credits
- Migration data: IRS Statistics of Income, U.S. Population Migration Data, Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income Division. U.S. government work, public domain.
- Boundaries: us-atlas by Mike Bostock (ISC license), derived from U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary files; Census Bureau cartographic boundary files (2023) for counties that changed since (public domain).
- Map projection and shapes: d3-geo and topojson-client (ISC license).
- Fonts: Bricolage Grotesque (© 2022 The Bricolage Grotesque Project Authors) and Figtree (© 2022 The Figtree Project Authors), both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Copies of the license ship with the fonts in this site's source (
assets/fonts/).
Third-party licenses and full notices, including the font license texts.