(The Center Square) – While residents are pouring out of states like California, New York and Massachusetts, they are coming to North Carolina in droves, according to new U.S. Internal Revenue Service numbers.
North Carolina ranked third for the most in-bound migration, according to the numbers, with the state showing a net gain of 82,620 people from 2021-2022, the IRS said.
Florida (245,334) and Texas (180,870) had more than twice as many.
North Carolina attracted the most residents from Florida, Virginia and New York, the data shows.
With declining birth rates in the U.S., migration is the primary source of population change in states, says Nathan T. Dollar, director of Carolina Demography at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Carolina Population Center in an interview with The Center Square.
“North Carolina’s population has grown substantially over the past several decades and continues to grow,” he said. “Fertility is on the decline everywhere. That means that the primary driver of population change now is migration.”