Photo: Billwhittaker at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0Making a living in Mediapolis
About one in seven work in Mediapolis; the top destination outside it is Burlington (22%, 14 miles). The two grades for Mediapolis are C+ for jobs and income and B for walkability. 5% of workers have no commute at all; Iowa has 11%.
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Mediapolis and work: the main findings
What drives the Jobs & income grade in Mediapolis
On income, poverty and job access, Mediapolis is better than 40% of U.S. towns. The poverty rate holds Mediapolis’ grade up (9.7%, U.S. 12.5%); job access by car pulls it down (ahead of 29% of U.S. towns). It also does well on household income.
Unemployment (1.9%) is left out: Mediapolis’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, Mediapolis could be anywhere from C− to B.
The places Mediapolis commutes to
Where Mediapolis clocks in
22% of workers
12% of workers
4% 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.
How a workday changes Mediapolis
On a workday 629 residents head out to work, 107 work right here, and 757 people come in from elsewhere.
About as many people by day as by night: the people who leave are replaced by the people who come in.
About as many jobs as working residents (1.17 per resident).
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
Factories, building and farms: 28% of the jobs in Mediapolis
864 jobs are based in Mediapolis.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Mediapolis, 2013 → 2023: 889 → 864. 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 Mediapolis’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Time on the road from Mediapolis: about 24 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.6 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Mediapolis workers work from home, vs 11% across Iowa. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 862 commuters (the 5% who work from home are left out). Across Iowa: 86% 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.
Half of Mediapolis commutes less than 14 miles
About 19% 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 Mediapolis, the car does most of the work
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Mediapolis is more walkable than 62% of U.S. towns. Both inputs place Mediapolis near the same point nationally.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 904 workers.
How TownRatings grades walkability →
Transit service (shown, not graded). 0% of residents live within a ¾-mile walk of a bus or train stop, 0% within a quarter mile. At the weekday evening rush, about under 0.1 trips an hour stop near the typical resident, more than in 20% of the 9,825 U.S. towns with transit data.
Transit at the evening rush trips an hour stopping within ¼ mile of the typical resident, EPA 2020
Households without a car (shown, not graded). 4.4% of Mediapolis households have no vehicle (Iowa 5.4%, U.S. 8.4%). <1% of Mediapolis’ commuters take a bus or train.
Mediapolis next to U.S. towns of 1,200 to 2,200: 2,564th of 5,381 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chevy Chase Village MD | 1,978 | $250K | 1.2% | 2.6% | 3% | A+ |
| 2 | Plandome NY | 1,482 | $250K | 0.9% | 1.4% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Hewlett Harbor NY | 1,332 | $250K | 1.9% | 7.2% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 128 | Van Meter IA | 1,978 | $135K | 2.6% | 1.9% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 134 | Walford IA | 1,359 | $129K | 1.1% | 2.8% | <1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 186 | Granger IA | 2,179 | $112K | 3.4% | 2.1% | 2% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 2,562 | Drayton SC | 1,452 | $78K | 27.1% | 0.0% | 2% | C+ |
| 2,563 | Owensville IN | 1,332 | $57K | 6.2% | 5.2% | 2% | C+ |
| 2,564 | Mediapolis IA | 1,660 | $76K | 9.7% | 1.9% | 15% | C+ |
| 2,565 | Sebree KY | 1,546 | $59K | 6.9% | 0.5% | 4% | C+ |
| 2,566 | Pecos NM | 1,375 | $88K | 9.7% | 7.0% | 4% | C+ |
| … | |||||||
| 5,381 | 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 Mediapolis, the top three, the last and three more from Iowa.
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 Mediapolis: questions
What is the median household income in Mediapolis?
$75,543 (±$13,851) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $75,059 across Iowa and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Mediapolis?
9.7%, against 11.1% across Iowa and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Mediapolis?
24 minutes each way on average, against 20 across Iowa and 26 nationally. 5% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Mediapolis work?
15% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Burlington (22%, 14 mi), West Burlington (12%, 13 mi), Mount Pleasant (4%, 20 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Mediapolis walkable?
Mediapolis is more walkable than 62% of U.S. towns (Walkability B): an EPA walkability index of 7.3 out of 20, and 3% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Mediapolis without a car?
<1% of commuters take transit and 4% of households have no car. 0% of residents live within a quarter mile of a stop.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Mediapolis, from the people who make the trip.
More of Mediapolis
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.