97% of Blacksburg’s working residents leave town for work
Most working residents leave Blacksburg for work: only 3% work in town. The top destinations are Gaffney (10%), Charlotte (7%) and Spartanburg (3%). Half commute less than 26 miles.
What kind of work town is Blacksburg?
Read from the numbers below. The page puts what stands out first.
10% of working residents work in Gaffney
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Where Blacksburg clocks in
10% of workers
7% of workers
3% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
Blacksburg makes things: 36% of its jobs are in goods
420 jobs are based in Blacksburg. Here is what they are, next to the jobs Blacksburg’s own residents hold wherever they work.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Blacksburg, 2013 → 2023: 443 → 420. 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.
Blacksburg quiets down on a workday
On a workday 867 residents head out to work, 30 work right here, and 390 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,600 people are in Blacksburg on a workday afternoon, 23% fewer than live here.
0.47 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 Blacksburg commutes less than 26 miles
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
About 22% 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.
About 30 minutes each way, longer than most of South Carolina
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 9.7 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Blacksburg workers work from home, vs 12% across South Carolina. 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 Blacksburg
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Blacksburg, 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.