The Hills has higher household incomes than 96% of U.S. towns
Jobs and income earn The Hills A+; getting around on foot earns it A−. The poverty rate is 3.6%, next to 13.8% for Texas as a whole. Working from home is the commute for 41% of workers, where Texas as a whole has 14%.
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2024, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Getting to work from The Hills, in brief
A lot of The Hills works from home
41% of The Hills workers work from home, against 14% across Texas. Time on the road ↓
41% of The Hills works in Austin
399 working residents, 41%, have their main job in Austin, 14 miles away. That’s 10 times as many as work in The Hills itself. The commute map ↓
A big share show a job far from home
31% of working residents have a main job more than 50 miles away. Part of that is employers that report every worker at one head office, so not all of those trips happen daily. How far ↓
Written from the Census figures on this page. Commute flows, distances and jobs are Census LEHD 2024, primary jobs only (the self-employed aren’t counted); commute time and working from home are from the Census American Community Survey; with 984 working residents, small shifts move the shares.
Jobs & income in The Hills: the grade in detail
On income, poverty and job access, The Hills is better than 98% of U.S. towns. Household income is its strongest input ($158,250, U.S. $80,734); job access by car ranks lowest, though still above most U.S. towns (ahead of 78% of U.S. towns). It also does well on the poverty rate and job access by car.
Unemployment (2.2%) is left out: The Hills’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, The Hills could be anywhere from A to A+.
Getting to work from The Hills takes about 24 minutes
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 7.6 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of The Hills workers work from home, vs 14% across Texas. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 558 commuters (the 41% who work from home are left out). Across Texas: 83% 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.
The places The Hills commutes to
Where The Hills clocks in
41% of workers
5% of workers
5% 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 far The Hills goes to work
About 31% 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 2024.
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 The Hills, and who commutes in
On a workday 946 residents head out to work, 38 work right here, and 316 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,700 people are in The Hills on a workday afternoon, 27% fewer than live here.
0.36 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 2024, primary jobs.
Mostly health care, schools and offices in The Hills
354 jobs are based in The Hills.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in The Hills, 2014 → 2024: 254 → 354. 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 2024.
Here is what they are, next to the jobs The Hills’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Good to walk, short on transit: The Hills
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, The Hills is more walkable than 77% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 6.6% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 3.0% across Texas, on an EPA index of 7.4.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 942 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 under 0.1 trips an hour stop near the typical resident, more than in 20% 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). 0.0% of The Hills households have no vehicle (Texas 5.4%, U.S. 8.4%). 0% of The Hills’ commuters take a bus or train.
The Hills next to U.S. towns of 1,600 to 3,100: 88th of 5,328 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kenilworth IL | 2,437 | $250K | 2.1% | 4.0% | 2% | A+ |
| 2 | Chevy Chase Village MD | 1,978 | $250K | 1.2% | 2.6% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Belle Meade TN | 2,621 | $250K | 1.4% | 0.3% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 20 | Oak Leaf TX | 1,684 | $132K | 2.8% | 5.5% | 0% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 23 | Southside Place TX | 1,916 | $163K | 5.0% | 5.4% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 33 | Bartonville TX | 1,937 | $149K | 4.3% | 0.9% | 3% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 86 | Clarkson Valley MO | 2,540 | $247K | 3.0% | 2.9% | 2% | A+ |
| 87 | Hopewell NJ | 1,944 | $145K | 3.9% | 2.1% | 5% | A+ |
| 88 | The Hills TX | 2,322 | $158K | 3.6% | 2.2% | 4% | A+ |
| 89 | Medina WA | 2,974 | $250K | 4.7% | 2.8% | 2% | A+ |
| 90 | Helena Township MN | 1,812 | $156K | 1.0% | 2.3% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 5,328 | Lame Deer MT | 1,872 | $24K | 55.8% | 42.2% | 61% | 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 The Hills, the top three, the last and three more from Texas.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Two sources, two years. Trips, distances and jobs based here: Census LEHD 2024, 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 The Hills: questions
What is the median household income in The Hills?
$158,250 (±$66,017) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $78,476 across Texas and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in The Hills?
3.6%, against 13.8% across Texas and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from The Hills?
24 minutes each way on average, against 27 across Texas and 26 nationally. 41% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in The Hills work?
4% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Austin (41%, 14 mi), Houston (5%, 160 mi), Bee Cave (5%, 3 mi) (Census LEHD 2024).
Is The Hills walkable?
The Hills is more walkable than 77% of U.S. towns (Walkability A−): an EPA walkability index of 7.4 out of 20, and 7% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around The Hills without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 0% of households have no car. 0% of residents live within a quarter mile of a stop.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from The Hills, from the people who make the trip.
More of The Hills
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2024, 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.