92% of Wood River’s working residents leave town for work
Most working residents leave Wood River for work: only 8% work in town. The top destinations are Grand Island (31%), Kearney (9%) and Hastings (4%). Half commute less than 15 miles.
What kind of work town is Wood River?
Read from the numbers below. The page puts what stands out first.
31% of working residents work in Grand Island
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Where Wood River clocks in
31% of workers
9% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
Wood River makes things: 31% of its jobs are in goods
309 jobs are based in Wood River. Here is what they are, next to the jobs Wood River’s own residents hold wherever they work.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Wood River, 2013 → 2023: 347 → 309. 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 26 minutes each way, longer than most of Nebraska
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 8.2 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Wood River workers work from home, vs 11% across Nebraska. Their commute is the hallway.
Wood River quiets down on a workday
On a workday 536 residents head out to work, 44 work right here, and 265 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,200 people are in Wood River on a workday afternoon, 18% fewer than live here.
0.53 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.
Half of Wood River commutes less than 15 miles
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
About 21% 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.
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 Wood River
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Wood River, 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.