This map shows where Mainers commute outside their own counties

Here’s a really great interactive map from the Washington Post detailing the commuting habits of 38 million Americans who travel outside their county for work.

It comes from the U.S. Census’s recently released 5-year survey of 38 million commuters, which asked its subjects, “At what location did this person work last week?”

That means the data includes people who might have traveled to work for a single event, like a conference, as the Post points out. It also could include trucker or delivery drivers hauling cargo outside of their home county.

Still, the map paints an interesting picture of the economic lives of Americans, as told by where they drive.

For instance, in Maine, the more north you go, the less likely it is that workers commuted outside their county.

Twenty-five percent of Cumberland County’s roughly 172,000 workers commute from someplace else. In Penobscot, 13 percent of the 74,343 workers did. Two percent of Aroostook County’s 30,323 workers commuted to another county. (The data apparently don’t include people who commuted to Canada.)

That’s likely due, at least in part, to southern Maine’s proximity to Boston. The map shows that 570 people in Cumberland County and 612 people in York County commuted to Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

Try setting the filter on the map for big cities like Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. Forty eight people commuted from Cumberland County to Manhattan, for instance.

 

Featured homepage photo by Michael Gil on Flickr 

Dan MacLeod

About Dan MacLeod

Dan MacLeod is the managing editor of the Bangor Daily News. He's an Orland native who moved to Portland in 2002 and now lives in Unity. He's been a journalist since 2008, and previously worked for the New York Post and the Brooklyn Paper.