Nearly 400,000 metro Richmond residents commute for work outside the locality where they live, according to a new report from UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center.
- Their top destination: another locality in metro Richmond.
Why it matters: The new data illustrates how deeply Richmond and its surrounding counties are interconnected.
State of play: The Weldon Cooper Center used commuting data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 employment and employer data sets, the most recent year available, to create its Virginia Commuting Patterns dashboard.
- This data can be especially useful to local governments as they plan for transportation and housing investments, the center notes.
What they found: In all four big metro Richmond localities, just a fraction of residents work where they live.
- And when locals commute, it’s not the city of Richmond that draws the most — it’s Henrico County.
By the numbers: Each day, 411,073 people commute from their home city or county into one of the region’s big four localities, per the data.
➡️ Here’s where they’re headed:
- Henrico: 143,546 commute in
- Richmond: 129,483
- Chesterfield: 91,584
- Hanover: 46,460
Yes, but: Except for Chesterfield, every metro locality attracts more commuting workers than it loses…