A survey this year confirmed for Lawrence economic development leaders what thousands of people learn every day on Kansas Highway 10 lots of area residents commute elsewhere to work.

A work force assessment survey commissioned late last year by the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce put a number on the trend. Roughly 22 percent of Douglas County’s working residents commute outside the county to their jobs.

Reducing that number is key to increasing the community’s future prosperity, Chamber President Bill Sepic said.

“How we can win back some of those commuters is a question we as a community have got to answer,” Sepic said. “I think we could have some great gains as a community if we could get that number down to 10 or 15 percent. That would be a great accomplishment and one we should strive for.”

After studying the survey, Sepic believes such a drop may be a realistic goal. The survey was done by researchers at Fort Hays State University.

“As we look at the number of people commuting and their reasons for commuting, we believe if we had some different types of jobs available in the county about half of them would very much like to work here in Douglas County,” Sepic said.

The reasons people gave in the survey for commuting were simple and straightforward, he said.

“Most people tend to be going to Shawnee or Johnson counties for higher-paying, white-collar jobs,” Sepic said.

That means Lawrence needs to focus on ways to create more of those types of jobs, Sepic said. He believes the answer may be in the high-tech sector, which oftentimes translates into high-paying positions.

“There’s no doubt that this survey shows we have to target those white-collar, professional jobs,” Sepic said. “For us our best potential is in areas like the life sciences initiative, the aerospace industry, the information technology sector. Really it comes down to this idea of technology transfer and how can we make it happen here in Lawrence.”

Sepic said the community is on its way to seeing gains in those areas by strengthening its relationship with the Kansas City area, particularly in the biosciences industry, and with the Kansas University research community.

The survey should give economic development leaders some firepower when they’re fighting for new high-tech positions, he said, because it highlighted several areas where the area work force excels.

“I thought it did a real good job of showing that we have a well-educated work force, our technical skills are good and our work ethic has always been very good,” Sepic said. “Those attributes can only help us.”

Other key survey findings:

About 70 percent of those surveyed in Douglas County work. Only 1.9 percent describe themselves as unemployed, 7.8 percent are nonemployed students and another 15 percent are retirees.

Approximately 15 percent of Douglas County residents have a second job, working an average of 18 hours per week at the second position.

Nearly 74 percent of Douglas County workers receive health insurance benefits at their job. About 73 percent receive paid vacation, 70 percent receive retirement benefits and 68 percent receive life insurance benefits. All those percentages are 5 to 15 percentage points below the average for the overall area, which includes Johnson, Franklin, Miami, Osage, Shawnee, Jefferson and Leavenworth counties.

A new job in Lawrence offering wages of $15 an hour would interest about 60 percent of the available labor pool in the city. At $20 an hour, about 73 percent would be interested.

About 23 percent of Douglas County workers are enrolled in some college or vocational course.