Trena Atherley was laid off from the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in October 2013.
She found a new job in March 2014 and started commuting from her home in Tooele to the Chevron Refinery in North Salt Lake.
Atherley is just one of many Tooele County residents who have lost work in the county and found a job along the Wasatch Front, according to James Robson, regional economist with the Utah Department of Workforce Services.
“The labor force in Tooele County is taking advantage of job growth along the Wasatch Front to find employment,” he said.
The economic engine of the Wasatch Front has created jobs while Tooele County has seen local jobs contract over the last four years, according to data from the Department of Workforce Services. Yet, Wasatch Front job opportunities have allowed Tooele County’s unemployment rate to drop over the last four years despite a loss of local jobs.
However, increased dependency on commuting has been linked to negative consequences for communities and individual commuters, according to researchers and local economic experts.
Data released last fall by the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that a growing number of people are making the trek down SR-36 out of the county for employment.
An estimated annual average of 10,234 Tooele County residents worked outside the county between 2011 and 2013, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2013 three-year estimate. That number is 40 percent of the total employed workforce in the county during the study’s three-year period.
And that’s up 1,100 people from the estimated number of people who commuted out of the county for work, according to a 2007 version of the same survey. The 2007 estimate was 38 percent of the county’s total employed workforce.
Robson sites the closure of Deseret Chemical Depot, a workforce reduction at hazardous waste industries in the county, downsizing of federal jobs, and layoffs in county government as contributors to Tooele County’s job contraction.
That decline in local jobs can be seen in the widening gap between the total number of people in Tooele County’s workforce and the total number of jobs available in the county.
In 2011 there was an average of 28,023 people in Tooele County’s workforce. That number includes everyone in the county with a job, and people who were unemployed but were looking for work, according to DWS data.
DWS data also reports that there was an average of 15,979 jobs in Tooele County in 2011. If every job in Tooele County was filled by a resident, there would have been 12,044 residents left without a local job.
DWS data shows that by 2014 the gap between the workforce and local jobs grew to 14,941.
In reality there will always be some people commuting into Tooele County for work, and some who live in Tooele County that choose to commute out of the county for work, Robson said.
For example, Kellie Baldwin lives in Tooele County, but she commutes to Salt Lake County for her paycheck.
Baldwin worked for Mountain West Medical Center for seven years. Last December a $4 an hour pay increase enticed her to commute to Salt Lake County to work for Apria Health Care.
“I loved my job at Mountain West Medical Center,” she said. “I miss it so much, but I had to sacrifice for the income.”
Tooele County experienced rapid growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, driven largely by people who chose to live in the county because of the lower cost of housing and/or they were attracted to the county’s lifestyle, according to Robson.
While people are free to choose to commute out of the county for work, there is growing evidence that ties commuting with negative consequences, he said.
Lower air quality, higher infrastructure costs, lower economic development opportunities, and reduced tax base are all downsides to commuting, according to the Association for Commuter Transportation, an international transportation trade group.
The negative effects of commuting on individuals include a lower quality of life, less personal and family time, and financial expenses associated with commuting, according to the association.
A study completed by Gallup in 2010 linked commuting with lower physical health and emotional well-being.
Commuters tend to have more neck and back pain, high cholesterol, and a body mass index that classifies them as obese. They also report they are less happy and experience more stress than their non-commuting colleagues, according to the Gallup study.
Concerns about worker commutes also exist in other countries. A study completed in Sweden by Umea University in 2011 found that a commute of 45 minutes or more increased the divorce rate among couples by 40 percent.
In the United Kingdom, a 2014 study by the Office of National Statistics found that a commute to work of 30 minutes or more lead to a lower level of happiness and a higher level of anxiety in commuters.
Half of Tooele County workers, 12,889 people, have a commute to work of 30 minutes or more, according to the 2013 ACS 3-year estimate.
And some Tooele County commuters are feeling those effects.
Baldwin reported that her decision to commute has left her with less time for her children. She has also noticed her eating habits changed because she gets home late.
Atherley said commuting comes with a price.
“The commute is stressful, and by the time I get home from work, it is hard to be able to cook meals sometimes,” she said. “If I want to exercise, I would have to go somewhat late after taking care of dinner and et cetera. I have had to sacrifice sleep mainly for the commute especially when the weather is bad.”
As Tooele County’s past planner and economic development director, Nicole Cline worked to bring companies like Walmart Distribution Center and Miller Motorsports Park to the county.
“The goal was to have enough jobs in Tooele County that anybody who wanted to live and work in the county could,” she said.
Cline also preached shopping locally to support area businesses and to keep sales tax dollars in the community.
“A high percentage of commuters generally means that money leaves the county as workers shop where they work instead of at home,” she said.
A large amount of commuters doesn’t help grow the county’s tax base either, said Cline.
Bedroom communities are defined by a large number of residences with some retail establishments to provide essential services to the residents with little industry or commercial businesses that employ local people.
“Residential property doesn’t generate enough taxes to support itself,” Cline said. “You need the industrial and commercial properties to bring in enough property tax revenue and to spread out the tax burden. Otherwise you will have high tax rates to provide required services.”
In 2012 the table turned on Cline. Her position as Tooele County’s economic development director was cut in the first round of budget reductions as the county’s financial crisis began. She eventually found work in Salt Lake City as a planner for the University of Utah.
Cline admits that she spends money shopping in Salt Lake City now.
“I have fallen to the very thing I tried to change,” she said. “I notice that I do tend to shop in Salt Lake where I did most of all my shopping locally in the county.”
The thought of moving to Salt Lake City to avoid the commute is attractive to Cline, but not enough to overcome the allure of living in Tooele County.
“I live in Tooele purely by choice, and I have to admit that at times, I do think about moving closer to work,” she said. “I just do not want an urban lifestyle as I still value the small town atmosphere of Tooele. I would love to find comparable work in the county.”
With 40 percent of Tooele County’s workforce leaving the county, Cline sees the potential for a bedroom community with a low tax base. Retail and service industries may struggle to survive while workers shop where they work instead of where they live, according to Cline.
The answer to reduce commuting is an aggressive economic development campaign aimed at recruiting businesses that will use the skill sets of the people who are commuting out of the county, according to Cline.
“We need jobs that fit the profile of the people that are leaving the county if we want to keep them in the county,” she said.
Cline suggests a goal of no more than 30 percent of county residents leaving the county for work. She admits the goal is arbitrary, but she said it is a good number to aim for to minimize the negative impacts of commuting on the community.
To lower the percentage of people commuting out of Tooele County for work from 40 percent to Cline’s suggested 30 percent, will require the number of commuters in the 2013 ACS estimate to drop from 10,234 to 7,646.
To make that possible, the county would need a net increase of 2,587 local jobs. To put that into perspective, such an increase is roughly equivalent to 14.5 more Cabela’s warehouses. The new Cabela’s warehouse, which is under construction at Ninigret Industrial Depot, is projected to hire approximately 178 workers when it opens this year.