Harris County, Texas, has among the highest number of commuters coming from another county in the nation, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today in new estimates released from the American Community Survey. Nationally, 27.4 percent of workers commute outside the county where they live.

Among workers in Harris County, 413,868 live outside the county, according to 2006-2010 estimates from the American Community Survey. For example, 154,557 workers commute in from Fort Bend County, 78,346 from Montgomery County and 52,785 from Brazoria County.

Meanwhile, 133,779 residents of Harris County leave the county for work, with 35,094 going to Fort Bend County, 31,675 to Montgomery County and 16,852 to Galveston County.

"It is well known that Harris County draws a lot of commuters to work. The detailed information in the American Community Survey tells us where Harris County workers are coming from, where its residents work, and how its commuting patterns compare to those of other large counties," said Brian McKenzie, a Census Bureau statistician who studies commuting. "This information shapes our understanding of the boundaries of local and regional economies, as people and goods move across the nation's transportation networks." 

The American Community Survey also provides annual estimates about how commuters in Harris County travel to work and how long it takes them to get there.

• In 2011, 80.0 percent of workers in Harris County drove to work alone, compared with 76.4 percent nationally.
• Meanwhile, 10.7 percent of Harris County workers carpooled in 2011, while 9.7 percent in the nation carpooled to work.
• In 2011, 2.9 percent of all workers in Harris County used public transportation -- excluding taxicab -- to get to their job, compared with 5.0 percent in the nation as a whole.
• About 0.3 percent of all workers in the county biked to work in 2011, compared with 0.6 percent nationally. 

• In 2011, the average one-way commute to work for people living in Harris County was 26.8 minutes. The average commute nationally was 25.5 minutes.
• About 7.6 percent of all workers had a commute of 60 minutes or more in 2011, compared with 8.1 percent in the nation as a whole.

View more commuting statistics for Harris County online: //factfinder2.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/11_1YR/S0801/0500000US48201

The American Community Survey provides a wide range of important statistics about people and housing for every community across the nation. The results are used by everyone from town and city planners to retailers and homebuilders. The survey is the only source of local estimates for most of the 40 topics it covers, such as education, occupation, language, ancestry and housing costs for even the smallest communities. Ever since Thomas Jefferson directed the first census in 1790, the census has collected detailed characteristics about our nation's people. Questions about jobs and the economy were added 20 years later under James Madison, who said [PDF - 3.9 MB] such information would allow Congress to "adapt the public measures to the particular circumstances of the community," and over the decades, allow America "an opportunity of marking the progress of the society."

-X-