A myth busted: Our kids aren’t leaving for Charlotte and Atlanta. Not as many as we think, anyway.

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For all the time I’ve lived in the Roanoke Valley, which is now more than four decades, I’ve heard a constant lament: We lose people to Charlotte and Atlanta. Our young adults leave for there. Our mid-career adults leave for there. From time to time, our major employers have left for there.

The latter is certainly true: The railroad that turned a salt lick into a boomtown is now in Atlanta, by way of Norfolk.

The former, though, is not, at least not in appreciable numbers.

The Census Bureau maintains a database that tracks where people move when they change jobs. Some, of course, don’t move at all — but many do, and that data helps paint a picture of how the nation’s economy is knitted together. And where it’s not.

I’ve spent some time looking through this data. I addressed some of this in a previous column, where I pointed out how the Roanoke Valley and Lynchburg have been rising as destinations for people moving out of the Washington metro to take jobs elsewhere — which raises the question of whether those communities will see any additional in-migration if people move out of Northern Virginia following President Donald Trump’s federal job cuts.

Out of this data, three big takeaways emerge:

• Charlotte and Atlanta, and out-of-state cities in general, are relatively minor destinations for people moving out of the Roanoke Valley. Ditto Lynchburg. The notion of big outflows to those two Southern cities is a myth.
  
• Northern Virginia is a powerful magnet for people across most of the state, who are making job-related moves, which further underscores how Trump’s federal job-cutting could have implications across the Virginia economy.
  
• Southwest Virginia is almost completely disconnected from the rest of the Virginia economy, at least in terms of how this data measures it.
  

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

Carolina (not) on my mind

We need to be precise about what we’ve got here and what we don’t. This data only covers people who are moving from one job to another. It doesn’t cover, say, retirees who might be packing up and moving somewhere. It also doesn’t cover people who are entering the workforce. It’s possible that a lot of Roanoke Valley graduates might move out and take their first job in Charlotte or Atlanta, but they’re not part of this database. This simply counts job-to-job moves. Also, for all of the numbers I’m about to present, this is data over a five-year span, from 2018 to the first quarter of 2023, the most recent period available. Now, on with the business:

Among those moving from job to job, the greatest number of people moving out of both the Roanoke Valley and Lynchburg move to … smaller communities in Virginia that aren’t in any metro area. We don’t know where those are — those places could be Danville or Martinsville or Wytheville or who knows where. The Roanoke Valley and the Lynchburg metro are the only metro areas in Virginia where the top destinations are smaller communities. I don’t know what that means, although generally, when people move, they often don’t move far, and both of these western metros are adjacent to lots of rural, non-metro areas.

For those workers moving out of the Roanoke Valley, the second- and third-biggest destinations are the Richmond area and the Washington metro (all these measures are by metro areas, not individual localities). The fourth-biggest is the New River Valley.

For those workers moving out of the Lynchburg metro, the second-, third- and fourth-biggest destinations are the Roanoke Valley, Richmond and Washington, in that order. You can find the Top 10 lists in a box at the end of this column.

But now to the point: According to this database, over the past five years, Charlotte ranked as the Roanoke Valley’s ninth-biggest job destination, tied with Harrisonburg.

North Carolina cities are even less of a draw to those in Lynchburg; Charlotte is the top one and it ranks 10^th. No Carolina cities make the Top 10 destinations for those leaving the New River Valley for work elsewhere.

Whatever Charlotte did to us, it did a long time ago, because Charlotte is only a distant jobs rival now.

If you want to think of it this way, Charlottesville is a bigger “threat” to “stealing” jobs from the Roanoke Valley than Charlotte is.

Washington’s economic magnetic field extends across most of Virginia

This may seem obvious but it’s worth restating, especially in light of Trump’s downsizing of the federal government. The Washington metro is a major economic force in the state, and whatever happens there has a big impact well beyond the proverbial Beltway. As pointed out many times before, the Northern Virginia portion of that D.C. metro area accounts for 42% of Virginia’s gross domestic product. In this data, we see the region’s economic power another way: Draw a line from Staunton to Charlottesville to Richmond. In those metro areas and others north of them in Virginia, the top place that workers move is the Washington metro.

Washington’s economic gravitational force extends farther out. In Hampton Roads, it’s the second-biggest destination, behind Richmond. In the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley, it’s third. In Lynchburg, it’s fourth.

The Washington area’s economic influence is felt statewide in terms of Northern Virginia’s tax revenues: Rural school systems get most of their funding from the state, and the biggest source of those funds is tax collections from Northern Virginia. However, the Washington metro’s economic force as a worker magnet starts to run pretty weak once you get west of the New River Valley. And that brings us to the third and final takeaway.

Southwest Virginia really is different from the rest of the state

During a recent appearance in Roanoke where Cardinal News brought in top leaders from both parties in the General Assembly, Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Washington County, talked about the challenges of being a legislator from Southwest Virginia. He said he often had to impress upon delegates from other parts of the state just how far away Southwest Virginia is. Some parts of the region are closer to seven, eight, even nine other state capitals than they are their own.

The job-to-job database offers another measure: It shows how Southwest Virginia is more connected to the Tennessee economy than it is to the rest of Virginia. We’ve seen similar data before in an analysis of commuting patterns, but it’s always useful to have an additional metric.

To be sure, this job-to-job movement is imprecise when it comes to Southwest Virginia because the metro area there straddles the state line: Kingsport-Bristol. When people move out of that metro, their top destinations tend to be in Tennessee, not Virginia. Places in Virginia that aren’t in a metro area rank second, with the Washington metro showing up in eighth place and Richmond ninth. To some extent, that shows what a powerful force the Washington metro is that it can still make the Top 10 so far away. Its magnetic attraction, though, is far weaker in Southwest Virginia than anywhere else. You’ll also notice that the Roanoke and New River valleys don’t show up in the Top 10 at all, even though they’re closer.

If we look at the other side of the coin — people moving into a community for jobs, not out — we find the rankings in most of these places are virtually the same. However, in Kingsport-Bristol, Richmond falls out of the Top 10 altogether for arrivals. That region is drawing almost exclusively from Tennessee and non-metros in Virginia.

What’s all this mean? I’d offer three thoughts for three points:

• The Roanoke Valley and Lynchburg should stop worrying about Carolina cities as rivals. They’re not.
  
• All of Virginia should take seriously any threats to the Washington-area economy.
  
• We should be wary of one-size-fits-all economic solutions because Southwest Virginia’s economy is oriented in a very different direction than the rest of the state.
  

For more on all this data, you can look up your own here. If you find anything interesting, let me know.

Where people are coming from and going to for job-related reasons

The following charts show where people who have moved out of a certain metro area and taken jobs elsewhere over the past five years have gone (destinations). And for people who left a job in one place and moved into the metro area over the past five years, here’s where they’ve come from (arrivals). Both charts ranked in order. All city names refer to their larger metro area.

Charlottesville

Observation: We see here how closely the economy of Charlottesville is connected to the Washington metro, both coming and going. Also, for reasons I can’t explain, Hampton Roads doesn’t show up on the arrivals list for Charlottesville. This is likely a data issue since there is usually a close match between the destination metros and the arrival metros.

Hampton Roads

Observation: No data available on where the people moving into Hampton Roads are from.

Harrisonburg

Observation: As with Charlottesville, we see a close connection with the Washington metro. Again, No Hampton Roads data for arrivals.

Kingsport-Bristol

Observation: This metro straddles the state line, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of Tennessee metros come up. Overall, though, we see how that metro is more connected to Tennessee than to Virginia.

Lynchburg

Observation: Charlotte ranks 10th as a destination but isn’t in the Top 10 for arrivals.

New River Valley

Observation: The list of places where people are coming from or going to is in the same order. Being near the state line, the New River Valley has some job-related population exchange with West Virginia.

Richmond

Observation: Again, no Hampton Rods data on the arrivals list.

Roanoke Valley

Observation: Charlotte is tied for ninth as a destination, but isn’t a Top 10 source of arrivals.

Staunton-Waynesboro

Observation: As with Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, we see the close connection with the Washington metro. Also, Hampton Roads arrivals missing here, as well.

Washington (incudes Northern Virginia)

Observation: Notice that the Roanoke Valley pops up at the No. 10 source of arrivals.

Winchester

Observation: Not surprisingly, a close connection to the Washington metro. Also, Hampton Roads inexplicably missing on the arrivals side.