City guide
Moving to Charlotte, NC: Commute, Internet & What to Know (2025)
A by-the-numbers relocation guide to Charlotte — the commute, where people actually work (interactive map), the work-from-home share, and the home internet you can really get.
Charlotte at a glance
- Metro ~2.37 million, growing ~2%/yr — one of the fastest-growing big metros in the US.
- The #2 US banking center — Bank of America HQ, Truist HQ, a major Wells Fargo hub, plus Atrium Health and Honeywell’s relocated HQ.
- Commute Score 58/100 (~24.7 min) — better than the 26.8-min US average today, but tightening as the region grows.
- 28.8% work from home; gigabit citywide with 8 Gbps to ~55% of homes.
Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing big cities in America — the metro reached roughly 2.37 million people in 2025 and is adding about 2% a year. People arrive for the jobs, the relative affordability (still cheaper than the Northeast and West Coast many are leaving), and the Sun Belt climate. If you’re weighing the move, here’s the by-the-numbers reality — the employers, the commute, housing, and connectivity.
| Metric | Charlotte | US benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Metro population (2025) | ~2.37M (+~2%/yr) | — |
| Average commute | 24.7 min (Score 58) | 26.8 min |
| Work from home | 28.8% | 13.8% |
| Work within the city | ~64% | — |
| Internet providers | 14 (6 fiber) | — |
The companies that anchor Charlotte
Charlotte is the second-largest banking center in the United States, behind only New York. Bank of America is headquartered in Uptown (15,000+ local employees); Truist — the bank formed by the 2019 BB&T–SunTrust merger — runs its corporate headquarters from the Truist Center on North Tryon; and Wells Fargo employs 27,000+ across the region. Beyond banking, Atrium Health is the metro’s single largest employer (70,000+), Duke Energy is headquartered downtown, and Fortune 100 Honeywell relocated its global headquarters here from New Jersey — a marquee win that signaled Charlotte’s pull for corporate relocations. The base keeps broadening into fintech, tech, and professional services as more companies follow the talent south.
Where Charlotte actually works
The map below plots every commute as a dot — drag it and toggle between where residents head each day and where the city’s workforce comes from. About 64% of Charlotte’s working residents work inside the city; the rest fan out to the surrounding Mecklenburg and Union County suburbs.
The commute — and why locals say it’s getting harder
Today Charlotte earns a Commute Score of 58 on a ~24.7-minute average — better than the 26.8-minute national norm, and nowhere near the 40-minute grind of the nation’s longest-commute cities. But that number is a snapshot of a fast-moving target. With population growth near 2% a year and development pushing ever further from the core, the region’s highways — I-77, I-85, and the I-485 loop — carry noticeably more traffic than they did five years ago. The score is genuinely good now; the trend is the thing to watch if you’re planning to be here a while.
Housing: priced up, and pushing commuters outward
The flip side of the boom is cost. Home prices have risen sharply as demand outran supply, and the hunt for affordability keeps pushing buyers further from Uptown — which lengthens commutes over time. The clearest sign of Charlotte’s gravity is across the state line: South Carolina towns like Fort Mill and Rock Hill, a 20–30-minute drive south, have become genuinely expensive largely because of their proximity to Charlotte’s jobs (and South Carolina’s lower taxes). Once-cheap bedroom communities are now sought-after — and priced accordingly. Those SC-to-NC commuters are part of a bigger pattern we cover in the biggest cross-state commutes in America.
Internet you can actually get
Connectivity is a genuine strength — and a real draw for the remote and hybrid workers moving in. Charlotte has 14 broadband providers, six of them genuine fiber, anchored by Spectrum (cable), AT&T Fiber, and Google Fiber.
Gigabit reaches essentially every home, and — unusually for a metro this size — 8-Gig fiber reaches about 55% of homes, thanks to AT&T Fiber and Google Fiber buildouts. Most cities its size top out well below that (see our internet guide for how the tiers work). Compare real plans for a specific address at FindBetterInternet.
Compare Charlotte internet plans →Remote work
For all its corporate-HQ, in-office DNA, Charlotte runs a 28.8% work-from-home rate — more than double the national 13.8%, a sign of how many transplants brought remote jobs with them. Paired with widespread multi-gig fiber, that makes it a practical base for hybrid and fully remote work. See the live figures and full commute map on the Charlotte city page.