How far people move when they change counties

The IRS files do not record distance, but they record the origin and destination county of every listed flow, and the Census Bureau publishes a central point for each county. The distance between those two points is a fair stand-in for the length of a move, with one caveat: two neighboring counties may be 30 miles apart center to center even when the household moved two streets. The figures below therefore describe distances between counties, not exact trips.

All listed county-to-county flows of 20 returns or more are included, 6,473,980 returns in all. That leaves out the smallest flows, which are the ones most likely to cover long distances between small places, so the long-distance share is somewhat understated.

1. Under 50 miles3,449,665
2. 50 to 99 miles789,225
3. 100 to 249 miles722,180
4. 250 to 499 miles352,414
5. 500 to 999 miles474,255
6. 1,000 miles or more686,241

Most moves stay local

The first bar dwarfs the rest. Moves of under 50 miles make up 53% of the listed returns: a family leaving a city for the suburbs, a renter crossing a county line, a household moving between boroughs. The next band, 50 to 99 miles, adds 12%. Beyond that the counts fall off and then rise again for the longest band, where the big interstate routes, such as California to Texas or New York to Florida, are concentrated.

The median move into each county

For each of the 285 counties with at least 40 listed origin and 40 listed destination counties, the site computes a median: half of its listed arrivals came from closer than that distance, half from farther. Across them, the middle value of those medians is 48 miles. In the median county of this group, 65% of listed arrivals came from within 100 miles.

The shortest medians belong to dense places surrounded by other counties. City of Alexandria, Virginia, has a median of 10 miles, and St. Louis City and Queens County, New York, are close behind. Moving into one of them usually means moving from the county next door.

The longest medians belong to places that are far from everything else. Honolulu County, Hawaii, tops the list at 3,006 miles because almost any move into Honolulu from another county starts on the mainland, and Anchorage follows at 1,408 miles. Among mainland counties, a long median marks a place that draws from across the country, such as Collier County in Florida or King County in Washington.

Arrivals against departures

The same median can be computed for departures. Across the same 285 counties the middle value is 42 miles, close to the figure for arrivals, but individual counties differ a lot. In 105 of the 285, the median arrival came from farther away than the median departure went. Collier County in Florida shows the widest gap: its median arrival covered 961 miles, its median departure 128.

The reverse pattern belongs to counties whose arrivals are mostly local and whose leavers spread farther. The widest gap in that direction is in Clark County, Nevada, where the median arrival came from 401 miles and the median departure went 600 miles. Only listed flows count here, so the smallest long-distance flows are missing from both medians.

Alaska and Hawaii need a word of their own. Distances are measured on the globe, not on the map, so a move from Honolulu to Los Angeles counts as roughly 2,500 miles even though the inset maps on this site draw Hawaii much closer to the mainland. The maps are for orientation; the miles in the tables are the measurement.

What distance does and does not show

A short median does not mean a county is unattractive to people from far away. Large counties receive long-distance movers in the thousands, but those flows are outnumbered by the local churn between neighboring counties. A retirement county with few nearby large counties can show a long median even though its absolute number of long-distance arrivals is modest.

The measure also ignores direction. On each county page the maps are split at 150 miles: the left map shows the local exchange, the right map the longer routes. Looking at the two side by side is usually the quickest way to see whether a county is a suburb trading households with its city, or a destination drawing from far away.

Distance in the tracer

The county tracer lists the distance for every flow it shows, so the same question can be asked of any county with complete totals: pick a county, read down the miles column, and see where the local flows end and the long-distance ones begin. The note on state-to-state moves covers the long routes in more detail.

Sources

IRS Statistics of Income, SOI Tax Stats – Migration Data, county-to-county and state-to-state files, 2019–20 to 2022–23 (irs.gov). County locations: US Census Bureau, 2023 Gazetteer Files. Calculations by countymoves; definitions in How to read the data.