Jason and Elizabeth Baylor Rector House · Photo: Jim Roberts · CC BY-SA 4.0Where Sidney earns its living
About one in ten stay in Sidney for work; outside it, Omaha is the main destination (12%, 42 miles). Sidney grades C for jobs and income and B for walkability. For 4% of workers, the job is at home (Iowa 11%).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
What the numbers say about work in Sidney
How Sidney earns its Jobs & income grade
On income, poverty and job access, Sidney is better than 33% of U.S. towns. Household income holds Sidney’s grade up ($80,714, U.S. $80,734); job access by car pulls it down (ahead of 9% of U.S. towns).
Unemployment (0.8%) is left out: Sidney’s labor force is under 1,000, too few workers for a steady figure.
A rough placement. Within the Census margins of error for income and poverty, Sidney could be anywhere from D to B.
How far it is to work from Sidney
About 22% 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.
The daily commute in and out of Sidney
On a workday 411 residents head out to work, 50 work right here, and 278 people come in from elsewhere.
About 920 people are in Sidney on a workday afternoon, 13% 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.
Where the trip to work from Sidney ends
Where Sidney clocks in
12% of workers
8% of workers
6% 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 kinds of work in Sidney
328 jobs are based in Sidney.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Sidney, 2013 → 2023: 336 → 328. 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 Sidney’s own residents hold wherever they work.
How long Sidney spends getting to work: about 20 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 6.3 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Sidney workers work from home, vs 11% across Iowa. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 446 commuters (the 4% 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.
Sidney is a driving town
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Sidney is more walkable than 64% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 5.3% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 4.4% across Iowa, on an EPA index of 6.4.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 467 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). 5.8% of Sidney households have no vehicle (Iowa 5.4%, U.S. 8.4%). 0% of Sidney’s commuters take a bus or train.
Sidney places 1,616th of 3,133 on jobs and income among U.S. towns of 700 to 1,400
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somerset MD | 1,151 | $250K | 1.9% | 2.3% | <1% | A+ |
| 2 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Baxter Estates NY | 1,014 | $154K | 1.0% | 3.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 54 | University Heights IA | 1,177 | $111K | 14.5% | 1.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 63 | Walford IA | 1,359 | $129K | 1.1% | 2.8% | <1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 119 | Gilbert IA | 1,389 | $123K | 3.4% | 4.1% | 8% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 1,614 | Evans Township IL | 1,148 | $70K | 11.6% | 1.4% | 3% | C |
| 1,615 | Pulteney NY | 1,240 | $69K | 6.8% | 3.8% | 8% | C |
| 1,616 | Sidney IA | 1,051 | $81K | 10.0% | 0.8% | 11% | C |
| 1,617 | Rockdale Township PA | 1,356 | $71K | 10.4% | 4.1% | <1% | C |
| 1,618 | Bushyhead OK | 1,289 | $59K | 9.6% | 8.9% | <1% | C |
| … | |||||||
| 3,133 | Oglala SD | 1,071 | $21K | 68.8% | 26.5% | 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 Sidney, 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 Sidney: questions
What is the median household income in Sidney?
$80,714 (±$13,826) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $75,059 across Iowa and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Sidney?
10.0%, against 11.1% across Iowa and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Sidney?
20 minutes each way on average, against 20 across Iowa and 26 nationally. 4% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Sidney work?
11% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Omaha (12%, 42 mi), Council Bluffs (8%, 36 mi), Tabor (6%, 10 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Sidney walkable?
Sidney is more walkable than 64% of U.S. towns (Walkability B): an EPA walkability index of 6.4 out of 20, and 5% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Sidney without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 6% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Sidney, from the people who make the trip.
More of Sidney
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.