Job Flows From Lane – Where Do They Go?

September 16, 2025

Brain Drain. The Great Resignation. Job Hopping – no no, Job Hugging. It’s no coincidence that so many popular terms in economics have to do with dynamics in the labor market. Recent disruptions like AI adoption and the COVID pandemic and recovery only add to decades of fierce debate about who leaves what jobs, where they’re going, and why. 

I can’t answer those big questions today, but an underappreciated tool from the Census Bureau allows us to examine worker flows in Lane County more closely. Job-to-Job Flows (J2J) and the Census Explorer tool look at a tremendous range of variables for workers who leave one job and start another soon after. 

At a relatively short delay, we can look at what geographies and industries workers are coming from or going to, whether they’re earning more money, or how demographics correlate with outcomes. 

You can explore hundreds of fascinating questions with this data, but I used the most recent release (first quarter 2024) to look at Lane County flows by geography. Do most Lane County workers who leave one job for another also leave our area?

At the beginning of 2024, roughly half of J2J workers from Lane County stayed in the Eugene metro area (for Census definitions, the Eugene-Springfield metro, or MSA, is equivalent to Lane County). The rate varies, with relatively more workers in leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, natural resources, and health care staying local. Trade, transportation, professional services, and information workers were more likely to get a job outside the area.

To me it’s an open question what these percentages should (or could) be, but there’s insight here into how deep local labor market opportunities are, or are perceived to be. Relative to all jobs, workers in professional services and information are more likely to go outside of our area to find their next opportunity.

When workers leave, where are they headed? Portland is the largest receiver of Lane job flows outside the county, with about one out of five J2J flows going to the multi-state metro area. Second is non-metropolitan Oregon, which could include nearby counties like Douglas or Lincoln, or other rural areas across the state.

It’s clear from the destination metro data that state borders matter a tremendous amount in the labor market. The only wholly non-Oregon metro in the top 10 is Seattle, which received about as many workers as Grants Pass, a much smaller economy. In addition to proximity, other factors like difficulty obtaining cross-state licensure in certain roles might contribute to smaller flows.

When jobs flow from Lane to other states, population size, destination job growth, and distance all play a role. Bordering states make up the largest part of Lane’s J2J flows that end up outside the state, with large states such as Texas and Colorado also represented. Proximity matters more than job growth or labor market size, though: Montana, while not a large destination for workers, still received more J2J flows than much larger states like New York.

While dynamic and fascinating, several limitations apply to this data. This analysis only focuses on a single quarter’s job flows, and while broadly speaking the rates are consistent, economic forces change over time and this only captures one moment in flux. Many of the industries or destinations cited above have relatively small numbers overall. The workers represented here are moving directly from one job to the next, making up only one part of labor market and population change. Workers moving for retirement, reentrants into the labor market, or graduating students accepting their first job would not be included in the data.

Highlighting what we can know from this data leads to some interesting further research questions. How are industries that retain more workers locally able to do so, and do individual employers in that industry benefit? Is sending workers to other areas of Oregon an example of brain drain, brain gain, or something else? What should the goal of worker retention look like in a mid-sized metro like Eugene, where job opportunities are wide but perhaps not as deep in certain industries? 

If you have thoughts about this topic, we’d love to hear them. Reach out to your local Workforce Analyst for data or to learn more about using QualityInfo or Census Bureau tools for labor market analysis.