84% of Mount Vernon’s working residents leave town for work
Most working residents leave Mount Vernon for work: only 16% work in town. The top destinations are Mount Vernon (47%), Marion (3%) and Dodds (2%). Half commute less than 6 miles.
What kind of work town is Mount Vernon?
Read from the numbers below. The page puts what stands out first.
About 16 minutes each way, quicker than most of Illinois
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 5.2 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Mount Vernon workers work from home, vs 16% across Illinois. Their commute is the hallway.
47% of working residents work in Mount Vernon
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Where Mount Vernon clocks in
47% of workers
3% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
Half of Mount Vernon commutes less than 6 miles
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
About 26% show a job over 50 miles away. Some of that is real, and some is employers that report every worker at a head office, so a few long commutes are on paper only.
Straight-line distance from each worker’s home block to their main job’s block. LEHD 2023.
Mount Vernon quiets down on a workday
On a workday 4,636 residents head out to work, 896 work right here, and 3,180 people come in from elsewhere.
About 11,000 people are in Mount Vernon on a workday afternoon, 12% fewer than live here.
0.74 jobs for every working resident, so most people commute out.
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
What the 4,076 jobs in Mount Vernon are
4,076 jobs are based in Mount Vernon. Here is what they are, next to the jobs Mount Vernon’s own residents hold wherever they work.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Mount Vernon, 2013 → 2023: 9,713 → 4,076. Big swings can come from how a large employer reports its locations, not only from real openings or closings.
Primary jobs covered by unemployment insurance (not the self-employed). Pay is monthly earnings. LEHD 2023.
Mount Vernon and the towns next door
The biggest share goes to Dodds (2%). Darker towns draw more of Mount Vernon’s workers. Tap a town to see its commute.
Average commute minutes, one way
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Every worker, home to work. The Census links each worker’s home block to their main job’s block, for jobs covered by unemployment insurance. That’s most jobs, but not the self-employed.
- Where the employer says. A job counts where the employer reports it. Some big employers report one address for many sites, which can make a few commutes look longer than they are.
- Two surveys. Flows, distances and jobs: LEHD 2023. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: the Census American Community Survey.
- Straight lines. Distances are as the crow flies between home and work. Roads, rivers and traffic make the real trip longer.
More of Mount Vernon
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Mount Vernon, from the people who make the trip.
Your answer becomes a post in Town Square.
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, primary jobs. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Distances are straight lines between home and work; real drives run longer.