THE PLACE TO BE
The number of people traveling to the region for work is on the rise
For about the last five years, Kate Loch has commuted from her Bucks County home to different jobs in and around the Lehigh Valley.
For a while, she worked in customer service roles, but now she drives a tractor-trailer for a Bethlehem company.
In that time frame, she’s learned the tricks to get from her Perkasie home to her employer.
Avoid Route 378 in the morning. Don’t bother going anywhere between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. And if there’s an accident on any of the major highways, don’t expect to get anywhere anytime soon.
Despite all that, Loch hasn’t balked when it comes to taking work in the Lehigh Valley.
“The Lehigh Valley does not lack for jobs for any means. It is a big hub. Even when I worked for a previous trucking company, I was in the Lehigh Valley a lot,” she said.
Loch is far from alone. Since 2010, the number of people who work in Lehigh and Northampton counties but live elsewhere has climbed to 97,403, an increase of nearly 10 percent.
More people still live and work locally or commute to jobs outside the Lehigh Valley. But those numbers aren’t growing as fast as the amount of people who commute into the region.
Census data reviewed by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission showed 12,536 commuting from Berks County, 11,069 from Bucks County, 8,050 from Monroe County, 7,968 from Montgomery County and 7,664 from Carbon County.
The data don’t break down what companies they are working for, but do show the municipalities they work in.
Upper Macungie Township, which has become a manufacturing and warehousing hub, leads the list as the destination of 14,114 workers. Allentown, with 13,004, and Bethlehem, with 9,963, are other major employment centers.
At the heart of the trend is that job markets rarely pay
attention to municipal boundaries, said Don Cunningham, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp.
The 2,042 people who commute into Manhattan or the 7,363 who head into Philadelphia from the Lehigh Valley make the trip because of the financial incentives involved.
A job in New York City is likely to pay about three times more than an identical job in the Lehigh Valley because of the higher cost of living in New York and its closer suburbs, Cunningham said.
A similar dynamic is evolving in the Lehigh Valley and its surrounding communities, but at a lower pay scale, Cunningham said.
People living in former coal regions such as Carbon and Schuylkill counties can stretch their money further by living where housing is cheaper and commuting to better-paying jobs in the Lehigh Valley.
“The Lehigh Valley is an interesting place because we’re a suburb of big East Coast cities where 100,000 leave to chase higher wages and we’re a job center for counties surrounding us who don’t have as strong an economy,” Cunningham said.
People earning $50,000 or more at their work are generally willing to commute up to 90 minutes or two hours to their workplace, making the Lehigh Valley an option for those with jobs in New York City or Philadelphia areas, Cunningham said.
People who earn less than $50,000 are less able or willing to go as far for their work. Instead, jobs that are traditionally considered blue collar draw from communities about 45 minutes away, Cunningham said.
That makes the Lehigh Valley, with its growing pool of logistics and industrial jobs, a magnet for people from Monroe, Berks and Carbon counties in Pennsylvania or Warren County in New Jersey.
While Bucks County has a similar or higher cost of living, the lack of those types of jobs in Upper Bucks makes the Lehigh Valley attractive for people living there with those skill sets, too, he said.
In the last few years, the Lehigh Valley’s unemployment rate has stubbornly stuck around 4.5 percent despite jobs and employers coming into the region, Cunningham said.
Most of the about 16,000 unemployed people in the Lehigh Valley are out of work because they lack skills for or interest in the jobs available here, said Nancy Dischinat, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Workforce Investment Board.
Her organization helps people find training to get into the workforce and then connects them with local employers.
The region’s ability to tap into the workforce in surrounding counties is a blessing, she said. Employers such as FedEx Ground in Allen Township or Zulily in Bethlehem take those groups into account when they decide to open hubs in the Lehigh Valley.
“We need workers coming into the Valley to fill the demand of jobs we currently have open,” Dischinat said. “We need to not only grow the skill sets of Lehigh Valley workers but also take advantage of those workers looking to take advantage of our jobs explosion.”
The emphasis schools and educators put on college educations has created a negative perception of warehousing and skilled labor jobs. But the shortage of workers nationwide in the logistics and manufacturing industries is making the jobs more attractive, Cunningham said.
Amazon, which has two warehouses in the Lehigh Valley, this year raised its minimum wage for new employees to $15 an hour. At that wage, a recent high school graduate could make $31,200 out of the gate, which is more than the region’s average per capita income.
Rethinking transit planning
But with more and more people commuting into the region, officials with PennDOT and the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission said they need to rethink how they maintain and grow the transportation network.
Some highways, such as Route 33, Route 22 and Interstate 78, have been and will remain priorities, said Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. But other connections, such as Route 309, Route 100, Route 191 and Route 512, may need to be given more consideration.
“We just have to think differently about all these roads,” she said.
It’s unlikely the region will see significantly greater funding from the state or federal government for these efforts, she said. Instead, the region will likely rely on better technology to make travel easier, she said.
For example, planners will likely call for traffic signal upgrades on these routes. This technology, which has been installed on Easton Avenue in Bethlehem Township, lets traffic lights “communicate” with one another about the flow of traffic. This creates longer periods of green lights for people on the main corridor without letting side streets get too backed up, Bradley said.
“You create travel corridors where it’s not just one red light after another,” Bradley said.
Christopher Kufro, assistant district executive for design at PennDOT District 5, said PennDOT officials need to look at the wider grid as well. Many of the commuters heading into the region are using highways outside the Lehigh Valley itself, such as Route 61 for people coming from Schuylkill County.
The inbound commuters are part of the decision to add roundabouts to Route 222, Kufro said. The improvements are expected to eliminate traffic jams at intersections that previously relied on traffic lights, he said.