It’s well known that Lawrence is a “bedroom community” that sends thousands of workers to Kansas City and Topeka daily.

But that’s only half the story.

Nearly as many workers come to Lawrence every day from rural towns around northeastern Kansas to work at Kansas University, Hallmark and other large employers, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures.

“We get a lot of people from Jefferson and Franklin” counties, said Xan Wedel, an analyst with KU’s Policy Research Institute. “We send a lot of people to Shawnee and Johnson. They pretty much cancel each other out.”

Not quite. Local observers suspect that commuter jobs in Lawrence aren’t as lucrative as those in the nearby cities – and that high housing costs here are pushing the city’s workers to live elsewhere.

“I’m not sure those numbers are encouraging,” said Mayor Boog Highberger, who happens to commute to Topeka for his day job at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Housing costs

But in a town that has long bemoaned the daily commuter drain, the news of a similar-size influx was surprising.

Phil Salopek, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau, said the numbers show that roughly 11,700 workers in Lawrence leave town during the day to work at jobs elsewhere. Just less than 11,000 workers from other locations come into the city to work.

“Sometimes, if you’ve got a major employer – in this case, the university,” that would account for the large number of inbound commuters, Salopek said.

Wedel said Census numbers show 1,600 Jefferson County residents commute to Douglas County daily; another 961 come here from Franklin County.

“We are quite a bedroom community … but we’re also adjacent to rural communities that have fewer employment opportunities, so you see them coming to Lawrence,” she said.

Wedel, Highberger and Lavern Squier, president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, all suggested that housing costs in town force workers here to live in less expensive towns nearby.

“I suspect housing costs play a big role in the number of people commuting into Lawrence anyway,” Highberger said. “It’s a pattern you can see in a number of places around the country.”

• Daytime population shifts due to commuting: Kansas and Missouri (.xls)

He added: “I think it has the potential to reduce diversity.”

City Hall, he said, is contemplating ways to ease the burden of housing costs here.

“I’ve got to think it reinforces my desire to do more about the problem of housing costs here,” Highberger said of the commuter numbers.

That so many workers in other communities choose to live in Lawrence, Squier said, is proof the city has a good place to live.

“Certainly,” he said, “a considerable number of people, not only the commuters but the people who live and work here, do so because of a high quality of life.”