Photo: Michael Rivera · CC BY-SA 4.0With 0.2 jobs for every working resident, most of Lee works elsewhere
Home is the office for <1% of workers; Florida has 16%. Lee has 30 jobs, and 139 of its residents work somewhere. Hardly any stay in Lee for work; outside it, Madison is the main destination (25%, 8 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Lee by day and by night
On a workday 138 residents head out to work, 1 work right here, and 29 people come in from elsewhere.
About 270 people are in Lee on a workday afternoon, 29% fewer than live here.
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
Commuting out of Lee: the destinations
Where Lee clocks in
25% of workers
15% of workers
2% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
What Lee’s employers do
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Lee, 2013 → 2023: 36 → 30. Big swings can come from how a large employer reports its locations, not only from real openings or closings.
Primary jobs covered by unemployment insurance (not the self-employed). Pay is monthly earnings. LEHD 2023.
Here is what they are, next to the jobs Lee’s own residents hold wherever they work.
About 23 minutes each way for Lee’s commuters
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.3 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Lee workers work from home, vs 16% across Florida. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 389 commuters (the <1% who work from home are left out). Across Florida: 83% drive alone, 1% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Close to home or a long way: work trips from Lee
About 41% show a job over 50 miles away. Some of that is real, and some is employers that report every worker at a head office, so a few long commutes are on paper only.
Straight-line distance from each worker’s home block to their main job’s block. LEHD 2023.
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Two sources, two years. Trips, distances and jobs based here: Census LEHD 2023, primary jobs, where the employer reports them. Income, poverty, unemployment, commute time and how people travel: Census ACS 2020–24 averages.
- Straight lines, older transit. Miles are as the crow flies. EPA’s walkability and transit files use 2017–20 inputs.
Jobs and commuting in Lee: questions
What is the median household income in Lee?
$46,264 (±$1,778) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $74,568 across Florida and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Lee?
33.7%, against 12.6% across Florida and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Lee?
23 minutes each way on average, against 28 across Florida and 26 nationally. <1% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Lee work?
1% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Madison (25%, 8 mi), Tallahassee (15%, 57 mi), Perry (2%, 27 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Can you get around Lee without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 1% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Lee, from the people who make the trip.
More of Lee
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, primary jobs. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Distances are straight lines between home and work; real drives run longer.