97% of Backus’s working residents leave town for work
Most working residents leave Backus for work: only 3% work in town. The top destinations are Hackensack (15%), Pine River (13%) and Walker (5%). Half commute less than 18 miles.
Who leaves, who stays, who comes in
On a workday 108 residents head out to work, 3 work right here, and 122 people come in from elsewhere.
About as many people by day as by night: the people who leave are replaced by the people who come in.
About as many jobs as working residents (1.13 per resident).
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
15% of working residents work in Hackensack
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Where Backus clocks in
15% of workers
13% of workers
5% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
Half of Backus commutes less than 18 miles
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
About 27% 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.
Backus makes things: 75% of its jobs are in goods
125 jobs are based in Backus. Here is what they are, next to the jobs Backus’s own residents hold wherever they work.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Backus, 2013 → 2023: 91 → 125. 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.
About 24 minutes each way, about the MN average
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.7 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Backus workers work from home, vs 18% across Minnesota. Their commute is the hallway.
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 Backus
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Backus, 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.