Photo: 25or6to4 · CC BY-SA 4.0Warrensburg is a college town: 27% of residents are students
Home is the office for 4% of workers, where Missouri as a whole has 13%. Jobs and income earn Warrensburg B−; getting around on foot earns it A−. About one in three work in Warrensburg; the top destination outside it is Kansas City (9%, 51 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
The commute and the jobs: Warrensburg in brief
Warrensburg’s biggest commute is a long one
The top workplace outside Warrensburg is Kansas City, 51 miles away as the crow flies. 9% of working residents (674) make that trip; no town closer to home draws more of them. How far ↓
A young workforce
33% of Warrensburg’s working residents are 29 or younger, about one in three. The jobs ↓
Warrensburg draws workers from far and wide
The 8,912 jobs in Warrensburg are filled from a wide area. Warrensburg’s own residents hold 27% and the ten next-biggest home towns 16%; the other 57% come from many towns beyond those. The commute map ↓
Few Warrensburg workers work from home
Only 4% of workers work from home, against 13% across Missouri. Almost everyone here travels to a job. Time on the road ↓
Written from the Census figures on this page. Commute flows, distances and jobs are Census LEHD 2023, primary jobs only (the self-employed aren’t counted); commute time and working from home are from the Census American Community Survey.
The figures behind Warrensburg’s Jobs & income grade
On family income, poverty and job access, Warrensburg is better than 47% of U.S. towns, #109 of 247 in Missouri. All three inputs sit close together, so no single one decides Warrensburg’s grade.
Where students are 15% or more of the people the Census checks for poverty (17% here), the grade uses the rate without them: 9.3%, against 16.2% for all residents. Unemployment (6.0%) is left out here: students looking for part-time work count as unemployed. Income is ranked as median family income ($89,929), since student households pull the household median down ($57,067).
A fairly firm grade. Within the Census margins of error for family income and poverty, Warrensburg could be anywhere from C to B+.
How far Warrensburg’s workers travel
About 29% 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 kinds of work in Warrensburg
8,912 jobs are based in Warrensburg.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Warrensburg, 2013 → 2023: 7,563 → 8,912. 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 Warrensburg’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Where the trip to work from Warrensburg ends
Where Warrensburg clocks in
9% 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 long Warrensburg 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 Warrensburg workers work from home, vs 13% across Missouri. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 10,040 commuters (the 4% who work from home are left out). Across Missouri: 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.
Warrensburg by day and by night
On a workday 4,822 residents head out to work, 2,433 work right here, and 6,479 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 (1.23 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.
Walkable streets, thin transit: Warrensburg
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Warrensburg is more walkable than 82% of U.S. towns, #39 of 247 in Missouri. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 8.8% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 3.2% across Missouri, on an EPA index of 7.6.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 10,412 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). 8.3% of Warrensburg households have no vehicle (Missouri 6.6%, U.S. 8.4%). <1% of Warrensburg’s commuters take a bus or train.
Warrensburg is 1,259th of 1,860 U.S. towns of 14,000 to 27,000 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rogers MN | 15,606 | $159K | 1.9% | 1.2% | 10% | A+ |
| 2 | West Springfield VA | 22,532 | $163K | 1.9% | 1.7% | 3% | A+ |
| 3 | Ada Township MI | 14,769 | $168K | 2.0% | 0.7% | 10% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 9 | Dardenne Prairie MO | 15,032 | $153K | 1.3% | 1.6% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 154 | Creve Coeur MO | 18,480 | $127K | 6.1% | 2.6% | 11% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 215 | Webster Groves MO | 23,450 | $115K | 4.2% | 3.7% | 7% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 1,257 | Round Lake Beach IL | 26,902 | $86K | 14.8% | 7.6% | 4% | B− |
| 1,258 | Yarmouth MA | 25,225 | $86K | 9.5% | 6.1% | 18% | B− |
| 1,259 | Warrensburg MO | 20,283 | $57K | 16.2% | 6.0% | 34% | B− |
| 1,260 | Hurricane UT | 25,745 | $75K | 9.0% | 3.9% | 23% | B− |
| 1,261 | Siloam Springs AR | 21,298 | $72K | 14.6% | 3.3% | 31% | B− |
| … | |||||||
| 1,860 | Douglas AZ | 16,038 | $42K | 27.8% | 12.3% | 29% | 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 Warrensburg, the top three, the last and three more from Missouri.
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.
- Students. 27% of residents are college students; the poverty input leaves off-campus students out (above).
- Straight lines, older transit. Miles are as the crow flies. EPA’s walkability and transit files use 2017–20 inputs.
Jobs and commuting in Warrensburg: questions
What is the median household income in Warrensburg?
$57,067 (±$4,139) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $70,702 across Missouri and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Warrensburg?
16.2% of residents live below the poverty line; leaving out college students, 9.3%. Missouri: 12.6%.
How long is the commute from Warrensburg?
20 minutes each way on average, against 24 across Missouri and 26 nationally. 4% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Warrensburg work?
34% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Kansas City (9%, 51 mi), Sedalia (4%, 26 mi), Lee's Summit (3%, 38 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Warrensburg walkable?
Warrensburg is more walkable than 82% of U.S. towns (Walkability A−): an EPA walkability index of 7.6 out of 20, and 9% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Warrensburg without a car?
<1% of commuters take transit and 8% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Warrensburg, from the people who make the trip.
More of Warrensburg
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.