(Gillette, Wyo.) When Wyomingites go to work, many take the highways.
According to the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, more than one in five individuals working in Wyoming commuted from another county or state to their place of employment.
Campbell County is slightly below the state average. Of the 26,484 people working in the county in the first quarter of 2017, 19.6 percent of them commuted from another state or county. Of those, 12.2 percent come from another county in the state, while 7.4 percent come here from another state.
Interestingly, only 7.8 percent of the residents in Campbell County work in another county. This is one of the lowest rates in the state. Teton County had the lowest rate, with only 4 percent of its residents working in another county.
Teton County also had the highest percentage of people coming into the county for work, with a total of 43 percent coming from other counties or states. Fremont County had the lowest portion at 12.5 percent.
The Research and Planning section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Service produces the report quarterly, which is used to assess and predict a variety of effects of commuting such as road use, accident rates, and impacts on emergency response service providers.
The report also provides data for economic development purposes, such as housing development needs. It can also show interesting patterns of economic activity in the state, such as the impacts of jobs in Sublette County in 2005. More than $76 million in wages were paid to people working on drilling rigs in the county, but 90 percent lived in other counties where the money was actually spent.
