Who’s Actually Moving Here
Upstate Data Series · the durable pattern in twelve years of IRS migration data
The story you hear: “everyone’s moving here from California and New York.” Twelve years of IRS tax records say otherwise, and the pattern barely moves from year to year. Set aside the folks just hopping over from next-door counties, and the biggest out-of-state source of Greenville arrivals isn’t California — it’s Florida, which sends more than three times as many people. Most moves, though, are simply the Carolinas reshuffling: the single largest source of all is Spartanburg County, right next door. Below you’re seeing long-distance moves first; flip to All movers to watch how much of “moving here” is really just crossing the county line.
Where Greenville County’s newcomers come from
People who filed from a new county, latest year. South Carolina out of state
Moving in — top 10 sources
Moving out — top 10 destinations
The money
What the average household reports as income on its tax return (the IRS calls it adjusted gross income), latest year: the people arriving, the people staying, and the people leaving Greenville County.
When did the boom actually start?
People moving into vs out of Greenville County, per filing year. The spike in 2021 is the pandemic and remote-work surge — net arrivals nearly tripled — and it has been easing back down since. Read this stretch as history: the line ends at 2023, the newest year that exists.
The out-of-state narrative, checked
People moving into Greenville County from the six states everyone names. North Carolina beats California every single year.
The Upstate shuffle
County-to-county moves within the Upstate, latest year — most “moving to Greenville” is this table. Read a row left to right: the people who left that county, and which neighbor they landed in. Darker orange = a bigger move. Hover a column header for the full county name.
Where these numbers come from, in plain English
- The source: your tax return records which county you filed from. When that county changes from one year to the next, the IRS counts that return as a household that moved. Every year the IRS publishes those county-to-county totals — counts and incomes only, never names. We used the 2011–2023 files, both directions: moves into and out of each county.
- What “people” means here: everyone on those returns — the filer plus the spouse and kids claimed on it. So the numbers count people, not just households.
- What the income figure means: the income a household reports on its tax return before deductions (the IRS calls it adjusted gross income). When this page says what arrivals “bring,” that’s the average of that figure per arriving household.
- Why the data ends where it does: the IRS releases these files roughly two years after the tax year closes, so the latest year shown here is the newest county migration data that exists anywhere — every study or news story built on IRS migration data has the same lag. When the next year drops, this page picks it up.
- Who’s missing: people who don’t file taxes at all — some retirees, students, and very low-income households. Real moves run somewhat higher than these counts. It’s still the only public dataset that follows actual households with actual incomes, which is why we use it.
- Why some places don’t show up:
- Keeping the math honest: the IRS files mix real county-to-county rows with summary rows (state totals, moves from abroad, people who stayed put). We separate those so nothing gets counted twice. “People already here” comes from the IRS’s own count of households that didn’t move.
- How “long-distance” works: we call a move long-distance when the two county centers are at least 75 miles apart, roughly an hour’s drive (county centers per the Census Bureau). We measure miles instead of state lines on purpose: Hendersonville, NC is “out of state” but functionally next door, while Charleston is in-state and a genuine relocation. In the long-distance view, far movers are grouped by state, and far-away South Carolina counties appear as “Elsewhere in South Carolina.”
Source: IRS SOI migration data · Analysis: Pemberton Data
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