5 Reasons West Virginians Leave and Then Come Home

Sometimes you have to leave a place to appreciate it.

Many West Virginians have left for school or work and found their way back.

Here’s what brought them home.

1. The Pull of Community

Amanda Wenisch, a Mercer County native, was getting ready to move back when a 2014 profile in West Virginia Living caught up with her.

A year after graduating college, she moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, for a job with a government consulting firm.

Blacksburg was a lovely place, but it was never her home.

You can like a place and still not belong to it.

As she entered her later 20s, she realized she wanted to be part of a community she loved.

She and her husband were selling their home in Virginia to move back to Mercer County.

Both could freelance in computer-based fields from nearly anywhere, and she was starting a web and marketing consulting company with a colleague.

Wenisch also said many people she knew who had left for school or jobs were slowly returning.

2. A Place to Build Up

Some people come back because they see work waiting for them.

If you’ve left a hometown, you may know how different it looks from far away.

Lori McKinney left Princeton after high school for college and travel.

She returned in 2004, saw the opportunity in her hometown, and began a grassroots effort to clean up Princeton.

Stephanie Johnson was inspired by the declining economy in her native Logan County to study community development at Clark University in Massachusetts.

She went with the intention of returning to West Virginia.

As of the 2014 profile, she directed the West Side Main Street revitalization program in Charleston.

3. A Tuition Break

Cost can bring someone home, as it did for Tighe Bullock, who left for college in Vermont.

His return was tied to education costs and the PROMISE scholarship.

He graduated from West Virginia University in 2011 with business and accounting degrees, the profile says.

As of February 2026, current PROMISE awardees were receiving up to $5,500.

To qualify, you need to graduate from a West Virginia high school and meet the program’s academic requirements.

4. Aging Parents

Doug Gerwig, a Braxton County native and woodworker, moved to Arizona when a job offer came to his wife, a chef.

The family built a business in North Scottsdale and had two children there, according to a February 2024 profile in West Virginia Living.

As the years passed, travel became harder for the Gerwigs’ aging parents.

If you live far from aging parents, you know how quickly the travel adds up.

So the family made West Virginia their home once more.

5. A Calling at Home

Amelia Ferrell Knisely grew up in Rand and was working at The Tennessean in Nashville, which she called a dream.

If you’ve ever had a dream job, you know that isn’t a small thing to leave.

Then she came across a one-year Report for America fellowship, a nonprofit program that places journalists in newsrooms.

She told the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s magazine that she felt called to come back and do the job.

One moment, after she saw empty shelves at a food pantry, convinced her that this was why she was home.

She is now an investigative reporter for West Virginia Watch, covering poverty, child welfare and government accountability.

The $25,000 Tax Credit

Senate Bill 438, the Return to WV Tax Credit Act, put a $25,000 price on coming home.

The bill offered a tax credit of up to $25,000 to people who moved back after a long absence.

To qualify, you had to be born in West Virginia or have lived and worked there for at least 10 years.

You also had to have been gone for at least 10 consecutive years before 2023, and then move back.

Nine years wouldn’t count.

The Senate passed the bill on February 27, 2023.

The House received it on February 28 and sent it to the Finance Committee, where the bill’s history shows it stopped.

The credit would have run through 2029.

The Population Math

West Virginia lost 3.2% of its residents from 2010 to 2020, falling to 1,793,716, according to the Census Bureau.

It was one of only three states, plus Puerto Rico, to lose population that decade.

Nationally, 4.9% of movers in 2023 had returned to the state where they were born.

Estimates for 2022 show slightly more people arriving in West Virginia than leaving.