A 2023 Update to Cross-County Commuting Patterns in North Carolina

Since 2015, LEAD Feed blogs have used LEHD data to calculate the percentage of workers whose highest earning private sector job is in their county of residence, also known as a county’s within-county share. Previous analyses have highlighted the number of counties with a 50% or greater within-county share. More specifically, the decline across time in the number of counties that meet this threshold points to the importance of thinking beyond county lines with respect to job markets:

Figure 1: Counties With A Majority of Within-County Workers Have Declined Drastically

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics, 2023, Private-Primary Jobs

The chart above shows even through 2023, North Carolina exhibited high levels of cross-county commuting. These eight counties1 were the only ones to feature a within-county share of 50% or higher:

Table 1: List of Counties with a 50% or Greater Within-County Share, 2023

In addition to identifying within-county shares, the data can also provide insights about counties’ share of resident commuters or share of jobs held by workers commuting from other counties. For example, here is a map shaded by the share of county jobs held by residents commuting to a different county for their highest-earning private sector job:

Figure 2: All but Eight NC Counties Feature A Majority of Jobs Held by Cross-County Commuting Residents

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics, 2023, Private-Primary Jobs

Roughly one third of North Carolina’s counties have an outbound commuting share of 75% or more, shown by the blue counties in Figure 2. The eight counties in gray are the same as those mentioned in Table 1, which feature a 50% or greater within-county share.

Another commuting indicator to look at is the share of county private sector jobs held by commuters traveling from another county for their highest-earning job:

Figure 3: Most NC Counties Have A High Share of Inbound Commuting from Other NC Counties

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics, 2023, Private-Primary Jobs

Here we see that most counties feature a significant amount of inbound commuting from other counties, indicated by blue on the map. The gray counties, which are the ones that have fewer than 50% of their jobs held by inbound cross-county commuters, are mostly located along the southeastern and western parts of the state.

Recent reporting from the Triangle Business Journal highlights the utility of the data for economic developers and local officials for counties on both extremes of the commuting flow spectrum. Johnston County, which features roughly 80% of its residents commuting to other counties for work, is trying to recruit employers to create high-paying jobs to attract workers back. On the other hand, Chatham County, which has 72% of its jobs held by inbound workers from other counties, is looking into affordable housing to create opportunities for its commuters to be a part of its local communities.

If you would like to explore commuting data for your own county, including common destination and origin counties for commuters, visit our Commuting Patterns tool.

• 1Absent from this year’s list compared to 2022 are Catawba, Cherokee, Macon, and Pitt Counties. Cherokee is at 41%, while the other three are at 49%.