Raleigh vs Tallahassee: which should you move to?

On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Raleigh went from 2,573 in 2023 to 2,399 in 2024 and 2,007 in 2025, a 16% drop in the last year, and property offenses from 12,665 to 13,854 and then 11,725. RPD's own 2025 report shows motor vehicle thefts down 32% (2,444 to 1,664), thefts from vehicles down 27%, non-fatal shooting incidents down from 91 to 79 and aggravated assaults without a firearm down 12%, while its all-assault total was flat at 7,418 and murders held at 25 after 24. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 26 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 2,007 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Raleigh Police Department (ORI NC0920100) in calendar 2025, divided by the 506,306 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 508,719 the rate is 395. RPD's 2025 annual report does not publish a count on this definition: its total violent crime of 8,541 counts every assault, simple assaults included (7,418 in all), and lists no rapes, so it runs more than four times the FBI figure and measures something else.

Homicides: 25 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in both RPD's annual report and the FBI CDE, against 24 in 2024, about 4.9 per 100,000 on the city population. RPD's wider count of homicide incidents, which adds one negligent manslaughter and two justifiable homicides, was 28. The high point in the CDE series since 2021 is 45, in 2022.

Down from a 2023 peak, though the rate is still high. On the FBI CDE's figures violent offenses were 1,587 in 2022, 1,732 in 2023, 1,383 in 2024 and 1,302 in 2025, about 785, 852, 678 and 635 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, so 2025 was 25% below 2023. Property offenses peaked later, at 5,804 in 2024, and fell 15% to 4,927 in 2025. FDLE's incident-based file shows the same direction, 1,806 violent offenses in 2023, 1,441 in 2024 and 1,363 in 2025, and for 2026 so far: January to August brought 783 violent offenses against 893 in the same months of 2025, down 12%, and 2,985 property offenses against 3,450, down 13%. The CDE has January to July 2026, 737 violent offenses against 769, down 4%. Tallahassee Reports, tabulating the police department's daily incident data, found total incidents down 22.6% in 2025, property crime down 28.3% and violent crime down 8.9%, but assaults in September to December up 55.8% on the same months of 2024, 299 against 192. The CDE counts were read on 2 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 1,302 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Tallahassee Police Department (ORI FL0370300) in calendar 2025, divided by the 204,902 Vintage 2025 city population; on the CDE's own agency population of 206,918 the rate is 629. The rate is high, for Florida and for the country. It is the highest 2025 rate of the Florida cities this site compares, above Jacksonville's 514, St. Petersburg's 502, Tampa's 375.5 and Miami's 359 and about five times Port St. Lucie's 130; only Orlando's 835.8, which is for 2022, the last full year the FBI has for that city, is higher. The CDE's rate for all reporting Florida agencies in 2025 is 248 per 100,000 and for the nation 329, so Tallahassee's is about two and a half times the state's and nearly twice the national. On the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's incident-based (FIBRS) file, which counts somewhat more (its forcible sex offenses include fondling), the department recorded 1,363 violent offenses in 2025, 663 per 100,000 on FDLE's population, the second-highest of the 46 Florida agencies serving 100,000 or more people, behind the Fort Lauderdale Police Department (675) and ahead of Gainesville's (635), another college town; a few large agencies' 2025 rows in that file, Orlando's among them, are plainly incomplete. The Leon County Sheriff's Office, which polices the unincorporated county, recorded 500 per 100,000.

Homicides: 20 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 9.8 per 100,000 on the city population, against the CDE's 3.0 for Florida and 4.3 for the nation, and against St. Petersburg's 9 (3.4 per 100,000) and Tampa's 17 (4.1), in a city half Tampa's size; Jacksonville had 80. FDLE's file has 21. The CDE series is 15 in 2022, 21 in 2023, 16 in 2024 and 20 in 2025. Tallahassee Reports, tabulating the police department's daily incident data, counted 18 fatal shootings in 2025 against 26 in 2024. FDLE's file has 7 homicides in January to August 2026, against 17 in the same months of 2025.

BLS counted 784,100 nonfarm jobs in the Raleigh MSA in July 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), up 15,900 or 2.1% on the year. Construction grew fastest (+6.8%), then education and health (+4.7%), while information (-5.9%), manufacturing (-1.7%) and trade, transportation and utilities (-0.4%) shrank. Professional and business services is the largest sector at 156,200 jobs, and government, with the state capital and NC State inside it, employs 107,400. The seasonally adjusted series (FRED RALE537NA) reached 786,100 in August 2026, 2.5% above August 2025. Average weekly wages across Wake, Johnston and Franklin counties were $1,621 in the first quarter of 2026 against $1,654 nationally. The newest large employers are drug plants in Holly Springs: Fujifilm Diosynth plans 1,400 jobs there by 2031 after a $1.2 billion expansion announced in April 2024, and Amgen about 725 across two plants after a $1.02 billion second one announced in December 2024.

Main sectors: Professional and business services, the metro's largest sector, Government (the state capital, NC State University, the county school system), Education and health care (WakeMed, UNC Health Rex, Duke Raleigh), Trade, transportation and utilities, Biomanufacturing and life sciences (Fujifilm and Amgen in Holly Springs, Research Triangle Park between Raleigh and Durham).

North Carolina's flat rate has come down every year since 2022: 4.99% (2022), 4.75% (2023), 4.50% (2024), 4.25% (2025) and 3.99% for 2026 and later, with further cuts from 2027 only if revenue triggers are met. Property tax is separate, with Wake County and the City of Raleigh each levying a rate on assessed value.

BLS counted 200,500 nonfarm jobs in the Tallahassee MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 2,500 or 1.3% on the year. Professional and business services (+1,600, or 5.4%, to 31,100) and leisure and hospitality (+1,100, or 5.7%, to 20,300) added the most, and private education and health services 400 (to 27,600), while government lost 400 (-0.7%, to 60,500): local government 300, to 14,600, and federal government 200, to 2,000, with state government up 100, to 43,900. Government is 30.2% of all jobs in the metro, and it sets the rhythm of the year: state government jobs dropped from 47,300 in April 2026 to 43,300 in July as the universities' terms ended, and it averaged 46,200 of 202,000 jobs in 2025 (22.9%). The City's 2025 financial report lists eleven principal employers for the city, led by the State (26,831), FSU (16,207), Tallahassee Memorial (5,696), the school board (4,300) and the City (4,000), which together employ 67,609; the report's earlier lists counted Leon County rather than the city, so they are not compared here. Most residents work in the city: 88.1% of the city's 103,272 workers worked inside it in 2024 and only 6.1% outside Leon County, against 54% outside the city for Cape Coral. 11.4% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 19 minutes, six shorter than St. Petersburg's and 13 shorter than Cape Coral's, with 1.9% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08008, B08013, B08301 and B08303).

Main sectors: State government: the State of Florida employs 26,831 people in the city, the largest employer by far (City of Tallahassee), and state government, which in BLS's count includes the state universities, held 43,900 of the metro's 200,500 nonfarm jobs in August 2026, 21.9%, and 47,300 (23.0%) in April with classes in session, Higher education: Florida State University (16,207 employees in 2025-26, 7,723 of them full- or part-time faculty and staff and the rest graduate assistants, student assistants and temporary workers), Florida A&M University (1,794) and Tallahassee State College (1,468), with 65,657 students between them in fall 2024, Health care: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, the region's nonprofit hospital system, is the third-largest employer (5,696), in a metro sector (private education and health services) of 27,600 jobs, Local government and schools: the Leon County School Board (4,300), the City of Tallahassee (4,000), which also runs the electric, gas and water utilities and the airport, and Leon County (1,957), in a local government sector of 14,600, Professional and business services, the law firms, lobbyists and associations that cluster around the Capitol (Wikipedia), with 31,100 metro jobs, up 1,600 or 5.4% on the year, the most of any sector; and retail and warehousing, with Amazon (2,256), Walmart (1,700) and Publix (1,400) among the city's eleven largest employers.

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value and qualifies it for the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A house in the City of Tallahassee (Leon County tax authority code 1) pays 19.2060 mills for 2025, the rates the Leon County Property Appraiser certified to the Department of Revenue: Leon County 8.3144, the county's EMS levy 0.7500, the Children's Services Council of Leon 0.3477, the school board 5.3660 (3.1180 required local effort, 0.7480 discretionary and 1.5000 capital outlay), the Northwest Florida Water Management District 0.0207 and the City 4.4072. The City lowered its rate from the 4.4200 it levied for 2024 and proposed again, but 4.4072 is still 4.7% above the rolled-back rate of 4.2080, and with taxable values up the City's levy rose 9.0% to $81.8 million; the County has held 8.3144 since 2012 (Leon County Property Appraiser). The 2024 total was 19.2379. Downtown Improvement Authority parcels pay one mill more (20.2060), and unincorporated Leon County, which has no city levy, pays 14.7988. That puts the city near Miami's 19.9878, Tampa's 19.8428 and St. Petersburg's 19.9197, a little above Hialeah's 18.6468 and above Cape Coral's 15.3806, as those cities' housing layers carry them. The school board voted in May 2026 to ask the county to put an additional operating mill for 2027 to 2031 on the November ballot to raise teacher pay (WCTV); whether the commission did was not confirmed. Zillow's typical home value for the city was $294,444 in August 2026, up 1.4% on the year and one of only two rises among the nine Florida cities this site compares (Miami's is the other), and its observed rent index $1,470 a month, up 1.5%, the lowest of the nine; only Jacksonville's typical home value ($285,103) is lower. The bills, exemptions, insurance and fees that follow from these figures belong to the housing layer.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or individual private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and North Carolina expanded Medicaid on December 1, 2023; about 740,000 people are covered by the expansion. Federal changes narrow it: non-citizen eligibility rules tighten from October 1, 2026, and from January 1, 2027 most expansion adults face a work requirement of 80 hours a month (or equivalent earnings) and renewals every six months. Three systems run Raleigh's hospitals. WakeMed's Raleigh Campus is a Level I trauma center, with a Level III center at WakeMed Cary, and WakeMed describes itself as Wake County's only provider of trauma services. UNC Health Rex, founded in 1894, is the UNC Health hospital in the city, and Duke Raleigh Hospital has 204 inpatient beds for cancer, heart, neuroscience and gastrointestinal care. The academic medical centers of Duke in Durham and UNC in Chapel Hill are inside the same region. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

The Wake County Public School System is one county-wide district and enrolled 160,413 students in 2025-26, 702 fewer than the year before; it projects 161,461 across 204 schools for 2026-27. More than a quarter of the county's students now attend charter or private schools or are home-schooled, according to the News & Observer. Every address has a base school, and families can also apply to magnet and year-round calendar schools. NC State University enrolled 40,503 students in fall 2025 (30,504 undergraduate, 9,999 graduate) and is the city's research university; Meredith College, William Peace University, Shaw University and Wake Technical Community College are also in Raleigh, and Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill are in Durham and Chapel Hill. Saint Augustine's University, a historically Black university in the city, filed for Chapter 11 in April 2026 after a long fight over its accreditation and is offering no classes in fall 2026.

Living there

Raleigh is a state capital and a university town at the center of a metro of 1.6 million, and most of it lives like a ring of suburbs around a compact downtown. Two workers in three drive to work alone, fewer than one in fifty rides a bus, and more than one in five works from home. The city's greenways run for more than 100 miles along its creeks and the Neuse River, yet walking and cycling together carry 1.5% of commutes. Work is spread across the Triangle rather than gathered in the city: state government and NC State in the city, Research Triangle Park between Raleigh and Durham, drug plants in Holly Springs, and Durham and Chapel Hill close enough to share the airport. Summers are long, hot and humid, with a July mean of 80.5F, and winters are mild. The open question is whether the region can build the transit its growth now calls for. The half-cent tax Wake voters approved in 2016 is paying for more buses and a first bus rapid transit line on New Bern Avenue, due by the end of 2028, but the commuter rail at the center of that plan is back at the study stage, so for now living here without a car depends on choosing exactly where to live.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024, against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of Tallahassee's was 8.5% (17,205 of 201,731) and Leon County's 8.1%, well below the state's. The city has two acute care hospitals. Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, a private nonprofit founded in 1948 that serves a 22-county region of North Florida and South Georgia, has a 772-bed acute care hospital, a psychiatric hospital and the region's only Level III neonatal intensive care unit, and is the city's third-largest employer with 5,696 staff (Wikipedia; City of Tallahassee). HCA Florida Capital Hospital, owned by HCA Healthcare and known until recently as Capital Regional Medical Center, has 266 beds (Wikipedia). The City's own count of hospital beds at the two is 1,060. Florida State University's College of Medicine trains its first- and second-year students in Tallahassee and places its third- and fourth-year students at regional campuses around the state (Wikipedia). This file did not verify wait times for primary or specialist care.

Education

Tallahassee is a college town, and the share of its residents in college is four times the national share. On the ACS 2024 1-year estimates 54,353 of the city's 199,776 residents aged 3 and over were enrolled in college (43,399 undergraduates) or graduate school (10,954), 27.2%, against 6.6% nationally and 6.2% in Florida; undergraduates alone are 21.7% of the city. Three public institutions account for most of them. Florida State University enrolled a record 46,184 students in fall 2025, 33,068 of them undergraduates and 11,022 graduate and professional students, of whom 43,936 took at least one class on the main campus in Tallahassee (FSU Office of Institutional Research). Florida A&M University, founded in 1887, the only public historically black university in Florida and the third-largest in the country by enrollment (Wikipedia), had 9,313 students in fall 2024 (7,890 undergraduates), and welcomed more than 1,900 first-time students in August 2026, its largest incoming class in a decade (FAMU). Tallahassee State College, called Tallahassee Community College from 1970 until it was renamed on July 1, 2024 (Wikipedia), had 12,455 students in fall 2024, all undergraduates, and acts largely as a feeder to the two universities. Together the three enrolled 65,657 in fall 2024 on the federal College Navigator's counts, and the City's 2025 financial report puts college-level students at 68,667. FAMU's fall 2025 headcount was not found in a source fetched here. Public schools are run by Leon County Schools, the countywide district, with 31,638 students in pre-kindergarten to grade 12 in 2025, down from 34,085 in 2019, in 51 schools (City of Tallahassee). The district is asking voters in November 2026 to renew its half-cent sales surtax, which expires in 2027 and has raised about $400 million since 2012, and warns of a $620 million gap in facility needs without it (WTXL; WCTV).

Living there

Tallahassee is Florida's capital, a college town and almost nothing else, and it shows in every figure here. It became the territorial capital in 1824 as a halfway point between Pensacola and St. Augustine, near the Apalachee town of Anhaica where Hernando de Soto's expedition wintered in 1539 (Wikipedia), and it sits at the southern end of the Red Hills, hilly by Florida standards, along nine officially designated canopy roads, with a winter unlike the peninsula's: it freezes about 27 nights a year and saw 1.9 inches of snow in January 2025. The State of Florida and Florida State University are its two largest employers, government holds 30% of the metro's jobs, and more than a quarter of residents are in college, which makes the city the youngest of the Florida cities this site compares (median age 28.5) and the one with the lowest household income ($56,511), the fourth-lowest share of homeowners, after Miami, Orlando and Hialeah (44.5%), short commutes and, after Miami, the most people who take the bus, walk or cycle to work. It also has the highest violent crime rate of the Florida cities here in 2025, 635 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts, two and a half times the state's, though falling since 2023. Its history includes the Tallahassee bus boycott of 1956, begun by two FAMU students, and the Frenchtown neighborhood, the oldest historically black neighborhood in the state (Wikipedia). It is growing slowly, 4.4% from 2020 to 2025, and its home values and rents are among the lowest of the Florida cities here, with a typical home at $294,444 and a typical rent of $1,470 on Zillow's indexes, against a property tax rate of 19.2060 mills, nearly as high as Miami's, Tampa's and St. Petersburg's.