LVEDC Director of Talent Supply Karianne Gelinas

Each week, Karianne Gelinas, Director of Talent Supply with the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC), will provide an update or additional information from its ongoing initiative to identify talent supply and demand issues in the region and create a strategy that results in a broader, ongoing understanding of the Lehigh Valley workforce. (See past updates.)

One of the opportunities for future research that became evident through the talent study was to further explore the Lehigh Valley’s commuter population.

The region has a workforce of about 344,000 individuals, 99,000 of whom leave Lehigh and Northampton counties for employment outside of the region. We are familiar with the trends of individuals commuting to larger urban centers such as New York and Philadelphia and the pull of higher wages outside the region but within driving distance.

To bolster economic growth, it would be beneficial to understand the basic demographic information of these commuters, how far they commute, their occupations and industry, their reason for commuting, and factors that may encourage them to work in the Lehigh Valley.

Additionally, knowledge of these super commuters’ compensation level/ranges would offer the potential of drawing correlations between how much people are paid and how far they are willing to travel.

Click here to read more about LVEDC’s ongoing talent supply initiative. Click here to see previous talent supply initiative updates.