Income of movers: do arrivals report more than leavers?

Each IRS migration line carries the total adjusted gross income on its returns, taken from the second year’s return, after the move. Dividing that total by the number of returns gives an average income per return for each group: arrivals, departures and the households that stayed. The figures say something about who is moving, but they come with a strong caution: an average is pulled up by a handful of very high incomes and says little about a typical household.

Counties where arrivals report more

Collier County, Florida, on the Gulf coast around Naples, stands out: arriving returns averaged $283,468, more than twice the $126,379 of returns that left. Palm Beach, Sarasota and Manatee Counties in Florida and Beaufort County in South Carolina follow. The two groups also travel very different distances. In Collier, the median listed arrival came from 961 miles away and 66% of arriving returns came from another state, while the median listed departure covered 128 miles.

Counties where leavers report more

The other end of the list is made of dense city cores: San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston’s Suffolk County, Arlington in Virginia and the District of Columbia. In each of them the households that left reported a higher average income than the households that arrived. Cook County, Hennepin County in Minneapolis and Multnomah County in Portland show the same pattern at lower income levels.

A high income for arrivals does not mean a county is gaining on balance. Miami-Dade County lost more returns through moves, relative to its size, than all but one of these counties, yet its arriving returns averaged $127,200, against $78,108 for the much larger group that left. The two measures answer different questions, and the county pages keep them apart.

Adding up the incomes instead of averaging them gives a county’s net income from moves: everything reported by arriving returns minus everything reported by departing ones. Palm Beach County comes out furthest ahead for 2022–23, at $3.02 billion, with Collier County second at $2.25 billion. Cook County comes out $4.46 billion behind, the largest negative figure among these 285 counties, just ahead of Los Angeles County at $4.38 billion. Like the averages, these totals are sums of what movers reported on their returns and nothing more.

The households that stayed

Each county page also shows the average for returns that did not move. In 260 of the 285 counties, stayers reported a higher average than either group of movers, and in only 3 did they report less than both. Moving households, on average, report less income than settled ones.

Most counties sit close to parity between arrivals and leavers. The middle ratio of arriving to departing income is 0.98. In 35 counties arrivals averaged at least 20% more than leavers, and in 13 they averaged at least 20% less.

States

At the state level, the IRS lines add up to a net income figure: the income of arriving returns minus the income of departing ones. Florida’s is by far the largest, at $20.65 billion in 2022–23, followed by Texas and South Carolina. California and New York have the largest negative balances. These are sums of the income reported by households that moved, not a measure of any state’s economy or tax base.

Per return, 22 of the 51 states saw arrivals from other states report a higher average income than the returns that left. Florida’s arrivals averaged $122,539 against $76,133 for leavers; in California the order was reversed, $95,523 against $102,120.

Smaller states show the same contrast in sharper form. Idaho’s arrivals from other states averaged $81,248 per return and its leavers $64,061; Washington, one of Idaho’s main partners, shows the opposite order, $89,890 for arrivals and $100,122 for leavers.

Limits of the comparison

Income on the second-year return reflects the year after the move, so a household that moved for a new job reports the new income. Adjusted gross income is also not the same as wealth or spending power. And the averages mix very different households: a county that receives a few dozen extremely high earners can show a large average with no change for anyone else.

For those reasons the site shows these figures only as averages per return, side by side with the average of the households that stayed. Each county profile has an income strip with the three averages; it places the county’s arrivals, leavers and stayers on one line so the gaps can be read directly. None of it is a guide to where to live or invest; it describes what movers reported on their returns.

The definitions are on the method page, and the full ranking of any county’s flows is in the county tracer.

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.