Published Jul-21-2010
This article follows that theme, but with a twist. Instead of splitting Oregon into two segments - urban versus rural or metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan - it divides Oregon into three parts. The following paragraphs compare and contrast selected employment-related data among metropolitan statistical areas, micropolitan statistical areas, and the remainder of Oregon outside of metropolitan and micropolitan areas.
Unofficially, one can think of micropolitan areas as those mid-sized places away from the large metro areas. For example, Roseburg - and, by extension, Douglas County - is a micropolitan area. It has a population of least 10,000 but less than 50,000 in its central urban cluster. On the other hand, Ashland is not a micropolitan area. Even though Ashland and Roseburg have similar populations, Ashland gets statistically swallowed by the larger Medford metropolitan area, as Ashland and Medford are in the same county.
Oregon has six metropolitan areas and 13 micropolitan areas. Eleven counties in Oregon are neither metropolitan nor micropolitan. Such counties have no central urban cluster with at least 10,000 residents.
Workers in Oregon's metropolitan areas slogged through commutes that were, on average, more than four minutes longer than for workers in micropolitan areas. Oregon workers outside of metropolitan and micropolitan areas had the briefest journeys to work of all (Graph 1).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, residents of the Portland metro area spent the most time getting to and from work. Folks from Columbia County, on average, traveled more than 30 minutes on their journeys to work, and the average Clackamas County worker took more than 25 minutes to get to his or her job site.
Among micropolitan areas, Curry County (that's the Brookings Micropolitan Area) had an average commute time of only 13.8 minutes, and Hood River County's figure was just 15.6 minutes.
By the way, the journey to work isn't always measured by drive time. As an April 2009 article by OED economist Brooke Jackson-Winegardner pointed out, about three-fourths of us drove to work alone in 2007. The remaining one-fourth used other means to get to work, including walking, biking, carpooling, or riding public transportation.
Those alternative means of transportation are an aspect of workforce dynamics that sometimes vary by community size and sometimes don't. For example, 5.8 percent of Oregonians worked at home, based on the 2006-2008 ACS data. That statistic hardly changes if one focuses on metropolitan areas (5.7%), micropolitan areas (6.1%), or other areas (5.6%). Similarly, the share of Oregonians who carpooled to work (11.3%) was about the same regardless of whether one concentrates on metropolitan areas (11.2%), micropolitan areas (11.7%), or other areas (11.2%).
But it's a different story if one examines "commuters" who walk to work. There's a statistically significant difference between the share of people who walked to work in 2006-2008 throughout Oregon's metropolitan and micropolitan areas (3.7%) as opposed to those who walked to work in Oregon's 11 counties outside of metro and micro areas (6.6%).
Oregon's micropolitan areas acted much more like their even-smaller counterparts when it came to public transportation, though. In metro areas, 5.2 percent of workers used public transportation to get to and from work in 2006-2008, while only 0.4 percent of micro area workers and 0.5 percent of other area workers opted for that mode.
Oregon workers in larger communities were much more likely to travel outside of their home county for employment purposes (Graph 2). Fully 25 percent of workers in Oregon's metropolitan areas traveled to a different county for work in 2006-2008. The figure climbed as high as 61.4 percent in Polk County and 51.1 percent in Columbia County.
In some ways, this relationship is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's because, by definition, suburban counties like Columbia County become part of a larger metropolitan area specifically as a result of these commuting patterns.
But multiple-county geographies are not limited to only metropolitan areas. Two micropolitan areas in Oregon bring together more than one county. The Ontario Micropolitan Statistical Area actually consists of Malheur County in Oregon plus Payette County in Idaho, again because of commuting patterns. The Pendleton-Hermiston Micropolitan Statistical Area encompasses both Umatilla and Morrow counties.
Coos County is a micropolitan area at the other end of the spectrum. According to 2006-2008 ACS data, only 4 percent of that coastal county's workforce left the county to go to work. Still, on average, 14.3 percent of workers in Oregon micropolitan areas went to work in another county. That's a much lower frequency than in metro areas but significantly more than in non-metro, non-micro areas.
American Community Survey data for 2006-2008 show that married-couple families in Oregon's metropolitan areas were more likely to have both the husband and the wife active in the labor force than was the case for married-couple families in Oregon's micropolitan areas. And micropolitan areas were more likely to have both spouses participating in the labor force than was the case in Oregon's 11 non-metro, non-micro counties (Graph 3).
Before anyone jumps to conclusions about how the preceding statistics reflect some sort of major cultural disparity between urban and rural Oregon, let's pause and be analytical for a moment. First of all, most Oregon households aren't even married-couple families to begin with. Graph 3 plotted data covering only 49.6 percent of Oregon's households; the other 50.4 percent of households contained either a single person or more than one person but not a husband and a wife.
Second, a more likely explanation for the differences noted in Graph 3 can be found by digging a little deeper into the demographic side of things. The most-rural parts of Oregon have relatively more senior citizens in their population than do the most-urban parts. During the period used in this analysis, 11.8 percent of metro areas' population was 65 years or older. In micro areas, it was 17.3 percent. In other areas, it was 18.8 percent. Thus, married-couple families in micro and, especially, other areas seem more likely to have had one or both spouses retired and therefore not active in the labor force.
Even with those explanations, we once again wound up with a graph showing a long bar for metro areas, a medium bar for micro areas, and a short bar for other areas.
