Mapping the Country's 38 Million Epic Commutes

Katie Park, Ted Mellnik, and Emily Badger team up to share an interactive map (with data recently released from the American Community Survey) that illustrates the commutes of the 38 million Americans that cross county boundaries on their way to work.

"In the District of Columbia, for instance, about 95,000 workers come in each day from Fairfax County. Nearly 140,000 do from Prince George's County."

The article notes the limiting survey question that gathered the data: "At what person did this person work last week?"—which means that the data "may also capture a D.C. resident who went to a convention in Chicago the previous week, or a long-distance trucker who lives in California but spent that week driving across Ohio."

But there is still a lot to be gleaned from the map: "people from all over the upper Great Plains who spend Monday through Friday each week at lucrative fracking jobs in McKenzie County, North Dakota, or oil-industry hands who fly back and forth to Alaska's North Slope, or workers in the District who'd rather buy the bigger home they can afford in Pennsylvania."