Photo: Farragutful · CC BY-SA 4.0Households in Elbow Lake earn less than those in 74% of U.S. towns
7% of workers work from home, where Minnesota as a whole has 18%. Below the poverty line: 19.3% of residents, where Minnesota as a whole has 9.3%. The two grades for Elbow Lake are D for jobs and income and B+ for walkability.
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Inside Elbow Lake’s Jobs & income grade
On income, poverty and job access, Elbow Lake is better than 10% of U.S. towns. All three inputs sit close together, so no single one decides Elbow Lake’s grade.
Unemployment (4.9%) is left out: Elbow Lake’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, Elbow Lake could be anywhere from D− to C.
Who commutes out of Elbow Lake, and who commutes in
On a workday 412 residents head out to work, 88 work right here, and 603 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,500 people are in Elbow Lake on a workday afternoon, 15% more than live here.
About as many jobs as working residents (1.38 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.
15% of working residents work in Fergus Falls
Where Elbow Lake clocks in
15% of workers
10% of workers
8% 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 Elbow Lake’s employers do
691 jobs are based in Elbow Lake.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Elbow Lake, 2013 → 2023: 667 → 691. 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 Elbow Lake’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Getting to work from Elbow Lake takes about 23 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.2 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Elbow Lake workers work from home, vs 18% across Minnesota. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 504 commuters (the 7% who work from home are left out). Across Minnesota: 84% drive alone, 2% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
How far Elbow Lake’s workers travel
About 21% 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.
Most trips from Elbow Lake start in a car
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Elbow Lake is more walkable than 72% of U.S. towns. The street layout scores higher than the way people actually get to work: 2.8% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, below the 5.7% across Minnesota.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 544 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). 7.0% of Elbow Lake households have no vehicle (Minnesota 6.7%, U.S. 8.4%). <1% of Elbow Lake’s commuters take a bus or train.
Elbow Lake next to U.S. towns of 900 to 1,700: 4,017th of 4,866 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 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Baxter Estates NY | 1,014 | $154K | 1.0% | 3.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 8 | Medicine Lake MN | 1,342 | $184K | 2.7% | 0.0% | 0% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 29 | Dellwood MN | 1,148 | $225K | 4.1% | 0.9% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 31 | Louisville Township MN | 1,361 | $143K | 1.1% | 0.9% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 4,015 | MacArthur WV | 1,493 | $36K | 36.4% | 16.9% | 2% | D |
| 4,016 | Cordova AL | 1,679 | $38K | 29.0% | 4.6% | 4% | D |
| 4,017 | Elbow Lake MN | 1,276 | $60K | 19.3% | 4.9% | 18% | D |
| 4,018 | Linton ND | 1,041 | $48K | 10.4% | 5.9% | 20% | D |
| 4,019 | Marion WI | 1,273 | $61K | 19.6% | 2.2% | 10% | D |
| … | |||||||
| 4,866 | 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 Elbow Lake, the top three, the last and three more from Minnesota.
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 Elbow Lake: questions
What is the median household income in Elbow Lake?
$59,792 (±$11,626) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $89,062 across Minnesota and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Elbow Lake?
19.3%, against 9.3% across Minnesota and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Elbow Lake?
23 minutes each way on average, against 23 across Minnesota and 26 nationally. 7% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Elbow Lake work?
18% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Fergus Falls (15%, 21 mi), Alexandria (10%, 30 mi), Ashby (8%, 11 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Elbow Lake walkable?
Elbow Lake is more walkable than 72% of U.S. towns (Walkability B+): an EPA walkability index of 8.7 out of 20, and 3% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Elbow Lake without a car?
<1% of commuters take transit and 7% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Elbow Lake, from the people who make the trip.
More of Elbow Lake
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.