Bonneville Dam Historic District · Photo: Eric Guinther (en:User:Marshman) · CC BY-SA 3.0Most of Cascade Locks commutes out: there are 0.5 jobs for every working resident
Cascade Locks has 282 jobs, and 534 of its residents work somewhere. The two grades for Cascade Locks are C for jobs and income and B− for walkability. Only 5% work in Cascade Locks; the top destination outside it is Hood River (20%, 17 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Cascade Locks at work: what stands out
Breaking down the Jobs & income grade for Cascade Locks
On income, poverty and job access, Cascade Locks is better than 35% of U.S. towns. The poverty rate holds Cascade Locks’ grade up (8.2%, U.S. 12.5%); job access by car pulls it down (ahead of 17% of U.S. towns).
Unemployment (5.6%) is left out: Cascade Locks’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, Cascade Locks could be anywhere from D to B+.
The towns that employ Cascade Locks’ residents
Where Cascade Locks clocks in
20% 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.
Cascade Locks on a workday afternoon
On a workday 507 residents head out to work, 27 work right here, and 255 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,100 people are in Cascade Locks on a workday afternoon, 18% fewer than live here.
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
Goods, not services: 34% of the jobs in Cascade Locks
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Cascade Locks, 2013 → 2023: 241 → 282. 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 Cascade Locks’s own residents hold wherever they work.
The daily trip from Cascade Locks: about 25 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.9 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Cascade Locks workers work from home, vs 19% across Oregon. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 610 commuters (the 17% who work from home are left out). Across Oregon: 80% drive alone, 3% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Where in the region Cascade Locks works
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.
Most trips from Cascade Locks start in a car
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Cascade Locks is more walkable than 49% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 4.1% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 8.4% across Oregon, on an EPA index of 5.5.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 739 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 0.3 trips an hour stop near the typical resident, more than in 47% 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). 3.2% of Cascade Locks households have no vehicle (Oregon 7.1%, U.S. 8.4%). 2% of Cascade Locks’ commuters take a bus or train.
Cascade Locks next to U.S. towns of 1,000 to 1,800: 2,770th of 5,400 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+ |
| … | |||||||
| 183 | Stafford OR | 1,600 | $163K | 6.9% | 5.0% | 1% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 190 | Coburg OR | 1,373 | $98K | 1.5% | 8.9% | 5% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 295 | Aurora OR | 1,113 | $108K | 6.1% | 2.1% | 1% | A |
| … | |||||||
| 2,768 | Delavan IL | 1,548 | $63K | 11.0% | 5.8% | 3% | C |
| 2,769 | Weston OH | 1,486 | $61K | 12.6% | 5.6% | 2% | C |
| 2,770 | Cascade Locks OR | 1,367 | $70K | 8.2% | 5.6% | 5% | C |
| 2,771 | Center Township KS | 1,057 | $67K | 8.4% | 2.0% | 4% | C |
| 2,772 | Mercer Township PA | 1,002 | $71K | 11.2% | 1.7% | 1% | C |
| … | |||||||
| 5,400 | 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 Cascade Locks, the top three, the last and three more from Oregon.
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 Cascade Locks: questions
What is the median household income in Cascade Locks?
$70,000 (±$20,463) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $83,011 across Oregon and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Cascade Locks?
8.2%, against 11.9% across Oregon and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Cascade Locks?
25 minutes each way on average, against 23 across Oregon and 26 nationally. 18% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Cascade Locks work?
5% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Hood River (20%, 17 mi), Portland (7%, 39 mi), The Dalles (4%, 35 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Cascade Locks walkable?
Cascade Locks is more walkable than 49% of U.S. towns (Walkability B−): an EPA walkability index of 5.5 out of 20, and 4% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Cascade Locks without a car?
2% of commuters take transit and 3% of households have no car. 0% of residents live within a quarter mile of a stop.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Cascade Locks, from the people who make the trip.
More of Cascade Locks
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.