86% of Mountain Top’s working residents leave town for work
Most working residents leave Mountain Top for work: only 14% work in town. The top destinations are Wilkes-Barre (15%), Wright (10%) and Plains (6%). Half commute less than 11 miles.
What kind of work town is Mountain Top?
Read from the numbers below. The page puts what stands out first.
Mountain Top makes things: 54% of its jobs are in goods
5,307 jobs are based in Mountain Top. Here is what they are, next to the jobs Mountain Top’s own residents hold wherever they work.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Mountain Top, 2013 → 2023: 3,588 → 5,307. 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 27 minutes each way, about the PA average
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 8.5 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Mountain Top workers work from home, vs 16% across Pennsylvania. Their commute is the hallway.
Who leaves, who stays, who comes in
On a workday 4,261 residents head out to work, 670 work right here, and 4,637 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 (1.08 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 Wilkes-Barre
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Where Mountain Top clocks in
15% of workers
10% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
Half of Mountain Top commutes less than 11 miles
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
About 17% 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.
10% of Mountain Top works in a bordering town
The biggest share goes to Wright (10%). Darker towns draw more of Mountain Top’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 Mountain Top
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Mountain Top, 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.