Net Commuters is the difference between the occupational residents in a region and the occupational employment in a region. For a region in which more workers live than there are jobs in the region, net commuting is negative (i.e. the net result is that workers commute out of the region for work). For a region in which there are more jobs than there are resident workers, net commuting is positive (i.e. the net result is that workers commute into the region for work).

Commuting patterns are derived from the Census Bureau’s LED LODES dataset. These commuting patterns are applied to to final Lightcast industry job counts (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) dataset) to create an industry-based commuting/industry-by-residence dataset. This industry-based set is transformed to occupations through staffing patterns, resulting in occupation-based commuting/occupation-by-residence data.

For more information on how place of residence job counts data is derived, see this article. For more information on how place of work job counts data is derived, see this article.