This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that half of Utah's jobs are in Salt Lake County. Now, new figures show that at least some residents in all of Utah's other counties (except tiny Daggett) appear to travel to work in Salt Lake County.
That's according to estimates from data collected between 2006 and 2013 by the American Community Survey.
An estimated 103,045 residents of other counties travel to work in Salt Lake County, on top of 468,609 residents of that county who work there.
While the survey's questions were designed to identify commuters, they are worded in a way that could include people who are just temporarily travelling to the county, said Jim Robson, regional economist with the Utah Department of Workforce Services.
He notes that the questions ask people who are employed where they worked during the past week. If they worked in more than one location, they were asked where they worked the most days in that week.
So besides commuters, Robson said, "it could include people who traveled for a conference or to visit a company's headquarters, or for something like consulting."
But he notes that workers in some industries, such as construction, often travel far from home and stay for a week or more — all of which helps to explain some of the more distant reported commuting.
The most frequent commuters to Salt Lake County are from:
• Davis County, 44,509.
• Utah County, 31,971.
• Tooele County, 9,536.
• Weber County, 8,515.
• Summit County, 4,170.
• Wasatch County, 1,002.
Some more distant counties with significant numbers of workers in Salt Lake County include: Cache, 720; Box Elder, 592; Morgan, 489; Washington, 281; and Sanpete, 253 — which would now include Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, a Fairview resident who says he makes the approximately 200-mile round trip daily.
The data also indicate that 94 percent of Salt Lake County residents commute within their home county.
The Salt Lakers who do commute elsewhere include 11,416 who go to Utah County (such as to new high-tech firms just over the county line in Lehi) and 10,020 who go to Davis County (such as to Hill Air Force Base, the state's largest employer).
Estimates also said 4,530 Salt Lake County residents commute to Summit County, 2,012 go to Tooele, and 1,628 go to Weber County.
Estimates say that 82 percent of all Utah workers labored in the same county where they live. Some of the other 18 percent sometimes traveled far away — including an estimated 643 who work out of the country in a given week.
Some of the other top out-of-state sites for Utah workers included:
• Clark County, Nev., home of not-far-from-Utah Mesquite and Las Vegas. Estimates show that 1,468 Utahns work there, mostly from southern Washington and Iron counties. But some come from as far away as Cache County.
• Elko County, Nev., home of the border casino town of West Wendover. An estimated 678 Utahns work there, the vast majority from bordering Tooele County. However, some workers live as far away as Cache, Morgan and Washington counties.
• Los Angeles County, Calif., has 663 Utah workers. They come from 11 Utah counties, but most are from Salt Lake, Summit and Utah counties. Again, the number includes people who may be there on temporary assignments.
• Coconino County, Ariz., home of the north rim of the Grand Canyon, is where an estimated 491 Utahns work.
• Uinta County, Wyo., home of Evanston, has an estimated 450 Utah workers.
Some other out-of-state locations of interest with significant numbers of Utahns include: Franklin County, Idaho (around Bear Lake), 325; Maricopa County, Ariz., (Phoenix), 307; Fresno County, Calif., 214; Orange County, Calif., 205; King County, Wash., (Seattle), 179; San Diego County, Calif., 166; Harris County, Texas (Houston), 158.