Photo: Jared Winkler · CC BY-SA 4.0Making a living in Mount Ayr
A typical one-way commute lasts 22 minutes (Iowa 20, U.S. 26). Jobs and income earn Mount Ayr C; getting around on foot earns it B+. About one in four work in Mount Ayr itself; outside it, Des Moines draws the most (5%, 68 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
The work figures that set Mount Ayr apart
Breaking down the Jobs & income grade for Mount Ayr
On income, poverty and job access, Mount Ayr is better than 26% of U.S. towns. Household income holds Mount Ayr’s grade up ($74,167, U.S. $80,734); job access by car pulls it down (ahead of 7% of U.S. towns).
Unemployment (4.0%) is left out: Mount Ayr’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, Mount Ayr could be anywhere from D to C+.
Mount Ayr’s commute, mile by mile
About 33% 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.
Who commutes out of Mount Ayr, and who commutes in
On a workday 478 residents head out to work, 174 work right here, and 503 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 (1.04 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.
Where Mount Ayr’s working residents head each day
Where Mount Ayr clocks in
4% 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.
What the 677 jobs in Mount Ayr are
677 jobs are based in Mount Ayr.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Mount Ayr, 2013 → 2023: 778 → 677. 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 Mount Ayr’s own residents hold wherever they work.
About 22 minutes each way, longer than most of Iowa
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.1 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Mount Ayr workers work from home, vs 11% across Iowa. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 735 commuters (the 8% 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.
For most of Mount Ayr, work means a drive
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Mount Ayr is more walkable than 70% of U.S. towns. The street layout scores higher than the way people actually get to work: 2.7% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, below the 4.4% across Iowa.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 800 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). 11.4% of Mount Ayr households have no vehicle (Iowa 5.4%, U.S. 8.4%). 0% of Mount Ayr’s commuters take a bus or train.
Among U.S. towns of 1,100 to 2,200, Mount Ayr ranks 3,922nd 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+ |
| … | |||||||
| 132 | University Heights IA | 1,177 | $111K | 14.5% | 1.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 145 | Van Meter IA | 1,978 | $135K | 2.6% | 1.9% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 152 | Walford IA | 1,359 | $129K | 1.1% | 2.8% | <1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 3,920 | Varick NY | 1,635 | $80K | 17.6% | 6.1% | 2% | C |
| 3,921 | Clifton Township PA | 1,522 | $57K | 13.2% | 8.0% | 1% | C |
| 3,922 | Mount Ayr IA | 1,637 | $74K | 10.9% | 4.0% | 27% | C |
| 3,923 | Allegany NY | 1,615 | $71K | 16.6% | 2.3% | 5% | C |
| 3,924 | Loretto TN | 1,813 | $56K | 8.6% | 0.3% | 10% | C |
| … | |||||||
| 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 Mount Ayr, 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 Mount Ayr: questions
What is the median household income in Mount Ayr?
$74,167 (±$12,391) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $75,059 across Iowa and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Mount Ayr?
10.9%, against 11.1% across Iowa and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Mount Ayr?
22 minutes each way on average, against 20 across Iowa and 26 nationally. 8% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Mount Ayr work?
27% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Des Moines (5%, 68 mi), Diagonal (4%, 9 mi), Creston (4%, 25 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Mount Ayr walkable?
Mount Ayr is more walkable than 70% of U.S. towns (Walkability B+): an EPA walkability index of 8.5 out of 20, and 3% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Mount Ayr without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 11% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Mount Ayr, from the people who make the trip.
More of Mount Ayr
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.