Home / Whatcom County, WA
Pick an industry to see how saturated it is across Whatcom County's ZIP codes, compared with the U.S. average. All figures use Census ZBP 2023 + ACS 2024.
Population. Census estimates 234,954 residents on July 1, 2024, 3.3% above 2020 (+7,503).
Latest year (2023→2024): births minus deaths +3, international migration +976, domestic migration +1,276. These are model-based estimates built from births, deaths, and migration, revised annually — not a census count, and they can differ from the ACS 5-year figure used elsewhere on the site. Components may not sum exactly because of rounding.
Jobs. LODES counts 87,267 jobs located in the county in 2022 (−0.2% since 2019) and 96,259 employed residents (+2.0% since 2019). A job and a worker are not the same thing: the first is measured at the workplace, the second at the home address, and one person can hold two jobs. Self-employed, military, and informal work are excluded.
Where movers come from and go. IRS matched individual tax returns between 2021 and 2022. 9,740 people (exemptions) moved into Whatcom County, reporting $582.5M in adjusted gross income; 9,521 moved out, reporting $552.7M. Net: +219 people.
Largest sources: King, WA (1,484) · Snohomish, WA (750) · Skagit, WA (705). Largest destinations: King, WA (971) · Skagit, WA (883) · Snohomish, WA (617).
People are exemptions on matched returns — not a population estimate. Non-filers, dependents claimed elsewhere, and people whose address did not change are treated differently than in Census estimates. Tax data lag about two years.
Each source is reported at its own geography and year. None of them measures demand for a specific business type; they describe whether the local customer base and job base are expanding or shrinking. Definitions and limits →
No ZIP had a statistically significant decrease.
ACS 5-year estimates for 2015–2019 and 2020–2024. Only ZIPs with at least 2,000 residents in both windows and a change larger than the survey margin of error (90%) are listed — small ZIPs move a lot on paper without a real signal.
Only ZIPs where the 2015–19→2020–24 population change is larger than the ACS margin of error and both windows have at least 2,000 residents. Sorted by population change. Jobs are LODES workplace jobs in the ZIP (2019→latest available year; 2019→2021 for Michigan, none for Alaska); a ZIP can contain more jobs than residents.
| ZIP | Neighborhood | Residents 2015–19 | Residents 2020–24 | Pop change | Jobs | Jobs change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 98248 | Ferndale | 25,391 | 28,498 | +12.2% | 10,267 | −3.7% |
Scroll the table sideways to see all columns.
Each percentage is the county's density of that business type per 10,000 people present (residents + 0.5×workers), divided by the U.S. average. 100% = exactly average.
Density is a supply-side signal. It does not measure foot traffic, income, tourism, or whether locals actually want more of a given business.
BizGapMap — free, no-login small-business saturation reports for major U.S. counties. Built entirely from public U.S. Census, BLS, and IRS data (ZBP 2023, ACS 2024 5-year, PEP 2024, LODES, QCEW, IRS SOI). No forecasts, no revenue guesses — withheld cells are marked, and the few derived counts are labelled as estimates.