Sure, Davis County is still the bedroom where more than 37,000 people who work in Salt Lake County sleep. But a growing number of commuters are going the other way. While Davis County's population has grown by about 2 percent each year in the past several years, its job count, in the same years, has risen better than twice that rate.

Many of Davis' new jobs are being filled by the county's friends from the south. Officials estimate more than 9,200 workers commuted daily from Salt Lake to Davis in 2004. And that number appears to be increasing.

"The trend is that Davis County has exceeded the state job growth rate for several years," said Kent Susler, manager of Davis County Community & Economic Development. That comes at a time when many large office buildings in downtown Salt Lake City have struggled to keep tenants.

Meanwhile, the state's smallest county is bustling, and approaching full "build out" - a term planners use to denote the time in which all available land has been developed. Susler believes that, as that time approaches, Davis County stands to become a destination for tens of thousands of additional workers.

For now, Davis still accepts far fewer out-of-county workers than it deploys - a fact traffic reporter David Mecham sees the results of every day as he surveys the often problematic Interstate 15 corridor that links Utah's capital city with one of the largest sources of its labor.

"It's still more traditional stuff - busy northbound in the afternoon and southbound in the morning," said Mecham, who reports for KSL-radio. "We don't really see anything slow on the the Davis County side unless there is an accident."

The benefits of the so-called "reverse commute" are not lost on Leland Shumway. The downtown Salt Lake City resident commutes north for work each day, and he rarely has to take his foot off the gas pedal.

Shumway said he feels badly for the folks he sees, each morning and afternoon, headed the opposite direction.

"The poor bastards," he said. "It always seems to be getting bad for them right around the time I hit Centerville."

Shumway has been making the reverse commute for less than a year, the last several months for his job as an accountant and, before that, for a position as an operator at Hill Air Force Base.

Many of those heading into Davis from neighboring counties are employed at Hill Air Force Base, the state's largest employer. Many more find work at the Clearfield Freeport Center, the largest distribution center in the United States, with hundreds of tenant companies. Both locations have employed a good chunk of Davis' workforce for years.

But more and more frequently, workers are finding that availability and wages for other types of jobs in Davis are competitive.

"In the past, the further south you went the better the pay was," said Becky Wiggill, a business consultant for the Utah Department of Workforce Service's office in Clearfield. "Now when people call me looking for jobs in Salt Lake, I say, 'You know, you may be better off in Davis.'"

Not surprising, given Davis' overall growth, many of those who come to Wiggill's office looking for work find employment in construction.

But Wiggill said work in Davis is increasingly diverse - and pay competitive - in everything from manufacturing to corporate management to food service.

Dane Hammond knows there are International House of Pancake restaurants closer to his home in Salt Lake City, but after three years at a Davis County location, he's not convinced that a closer cafe would do him any better.

"I've been offered work there before and I stayed here," Hammond said between assisting customers at the store he manages in Layton. "I worked at a restaurant in Salt Lake City before and, with all the lights, it took me 20 minutes to get there from my house, so it was no different."

Although he's not the only one making a reverse commute to Davis, Bob Wylie said he still gets quizzical looks from those who learn that he travels from Holladay to Clearfield, where he works as the city's finance director.

But Wylie, who worked for the state for 19 years before taking the job in Clearfield, said he makes his commute for many of the same reasons as they do.

"The kids were in school, so we're not relocating at this point," he said. "So I make the drive."

mlaplante@sltrib.com