Photo: Brian Stansberry · CC BY 4.0Household incomes in Comer are lower than in 84% of U.S. towns
Below the poverty line: 23.3% of residents, against 13.4% across Georgia. Comer grades D for jobs and income and A− for walkability. For 5% of workers, the job is at home; Georgia has 16%.
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
What sets Comer apart on work
Comer’s Jobs & income grade, measure by measure
On income, poverty and job access, Comer is better than 12% of U.S. towns. Job access by car holds Comer’s grade up (ahead of 40% of U.S. towns); the poverty rate pulls it down.
Unemployment (3.9%) is left out: Comer’s labor force is under 1,000, too few workers for a steady figure.
A fairly firm grade. Within the Census margins of error for income and poverty, Comer could be anywhere from D to C+.
30% of working residents work in Athens
Where Comer clocks in
3% 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.
The daily flow of workers through Comer
On a workday 624 residents head out to work, 31 work right here, and 435 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,400 people are in Comer on a workday afternoon, 12% fewer than live here.
0.71 jobs for every working resident, so most people commute out.
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
In Comer, services account for most jobs
466 jobs are based in Comer.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Comer, 2013 → 2023: 512 → 466. 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 Comer’s own residents hold wherever they work.
The trip to work from Comer: about 26 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 8.4 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Comer workers work from home, vs 16% across Georgia. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 831 commuters (the 5% who work from home are left out). Across Georgia: 84% 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.
Where in the region Comer works
About 25% 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.
In Comer, walking beats the bus
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Comer is more walkable than 80% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 16.4% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 3.1% across Georgia, on an EPA index of 7.0.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 873 workers.
How TownRatings grades walkability →
Transit service: no data. EPA’s transit file has no stops for most of this county (its agencies had not published schedules in the format EPA used in 2020). That is missing data, not a finding that there is no bus or train.
Households without a car (shown, not graded). 1.0% of Comer households have no vehicle (Georgia 5.9%, U.S. 8.4%). <1% of Comer’s commuters take a bus or train.
Comer next to U.S. towns of 1,100 to 2,200: 4,941st of 6,161 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somerset MD | 1,151 | $250K | 1.9% | 2.3% | <1% | A+ |
| 2 | Chevy Chase Village MD | 1,978 | $250K | 1.2% | 2.6% | 3% | A+ |
| 3 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 19 | Berkeley Lake GA | 2,034 | $166K | 1.6% | 1.6% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 122 | Fairplay GA | 1,881 | $120K | 1.6% | 1.2% | <1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 204 | Isle of Hope GA | 2,053 | $105K | 1.4% | 1.3% | 5% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 4,939 | Austin Township MI | 1,805 | $64K | 17.2% | 2.1% | 1% | D |
| 4,940 | Mead Township PA | 1,248 | $54K | 13.1% | 1.4% | 5% | D |
| 4,941 | Comer GA | 1,631 | $53K | 23.3% | 3.9% | 5% | D |
| 4,942 | Duson LA | 1,357 | $25K | 39.3% | 10.6% | <1% | D |
| 4,943 | Salisbury MO | 1,564 | $65K | 16.9% | 4.5% | 21% | D |
| … | |||||||
| 6,161 | Paraje NM | 1,333 | $33K | 61.7% | 0.0% | 0% | D− |
Census ACS 2020–24 (income, poverty, unemployment), Census LEHD (work in town), TownRatings Jobs & income grades. Each town links to its Work & commute page.
Ranked on the Jobs & income grade: the towns either side of Comer, the top three, the last and three more from Georgia.
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 Comer: questions
What is the median household income in Comer?
$52,891 (±$14,443) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $77,353 across Georgia and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Comer?
23.3%, against 13.4% across Georgia and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Comer?
26 minutes each way on average, against 28 across Georgia and 26 nationally. 5% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Comer work?
5% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Athens (30%, 16 mi), Atlanta (3%, 77 mi), Gainesville (2%, 43 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Comer walkable?
Comer is more walkable than 80% of U.S. towns (Walkability A−): an EPA walkability index of 7.0 out of 20, and 16% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Comer without a car?
<1% 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 Comer, from the people who make the trip.
More of Comer
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. Walkability index, job access and transit service: U.S. EPA Smart Location Database. The two grades are our own summaries of these figures, not official ratings.