Commuting

US Employment Commuting 

Employment commuting data provides employment counts by place of residence and place of work, from 2001 to the current year, for all four classes of worker. Data is available at the nation, state, MSA, county, and zip code levels.

The primary source of commuting data for employees (class of worker 1 and 2) is LODES (LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics). We start with employment data at six-digit industry and zip code geography levels. To this we apply a commuting pattern, which is normalized employment data by two-digit industry, place of residence, and place of work at the zip-code level. We combine the resulting zip-to-zip commuting data, aggregate away the industry detail, roll up the values to county and MSA levels, then clean and standardize the final output. LODES data usually lags behind Emsi Burning Glass’s primary employment sources by 2-3 years, but as a convenience for customers Emsi Burning Glass provides later years of commuting data by applying the latest available commuting pattern from LODES to later years of Emsi Burning Glass employment data.

For non-employees (class of worker 3 and 4), we start with employment data at the five-digit occupation and zip-code level. For this data we assume that the place of work is the same as the place of residence. We then aggregate away the occupation detail, and roll up the values to county and MSA levels.