More Spokane residents work in Idaho, survey says

The number of Spokane residents commuting to jobs in Kootenai County has surged in the past four years. Everyone agrees on that.

What isn’t so clear is how many Spokane County adults earn their paychecks in Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Rathdrum or other towns in Kootenai County.

A recent marketing survey of cross-border work patterns found that about 15,000 Spokane workers earn at least part of their salaries in Kootenai County. The same survey, conducted last fall, showed about 9,000 Kootenai County workers have jobs in Spokane County.

Labor analysts and economists have varying reactions to those numbers. Some say it’s unlikely there are 6,000 more Spokane residents working in Idaho than the other way around. Others contend the estimate may not be far off the mark.

In any case, traffic data provided by the federal government shows that the volume of cars heading into Idaho on Interstate 90 during the morning is heavier than it’s ever been.

“It used to be that it was much heavier going into Spokane in the morning,” said Glenn Miles, transportation manager for the Spokane Regional Transportation Council. “It’s clearly balancing out in the past few years.”

The 15,000 estimate is vastly different from the 2000 federal census, which found that just 2,200 Spokane County adults worked in Kootenai County. According to the census, four times as many Kootenai County residents – 8,190 working adults – held jobs in Spokane County.

The source of the new estimate is Belden Associates, a reputable Dallas-based firm that conducted a 1,200-person phone survey for Cowles Publishing Co. The company, which publishes The Spokesman-Review, uses Belden to track market data and consumer trends.

While Kootenai County gained nearly 7,000 jobs since 2000, it’s doubtful that most of them were filled by Spokane residents, said Kathryn Tacke, who monitors Panhandle hiring patterns for the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor.

“I’d believe there is some increase since the 2000 census. But a net gain of almost 13,000 more workers than the census said is a bit much,” she said.

Tacke said no one denies that North Idaho and Kootenai County have created far more jobs in recent years than Spokane. From 2000 to 2004, Spokane County added 4,000 jobs, while Kootenai County added about 6,800.

Longer drive

Manuel Cortes, who lost his job at Liberty Lake-based Telect Inc. last year, is a Spokane resident who now travels daily to an Idaho job.

Cortes is the account manager for Latin and Central America at Trans- tector Systems, a Hayden Lake equipment manufacturer. He used to have a 12-mile, round-trip daily commute. Now he drives 64 miles, he said.

Despite the increase in Washington-to-Idaho commuters, Cortes said he still sees far more vehicles heading from Idaho to Spokane in the morning than vice versa.

He’s not alone. Other I-90 drivers say they just have to look around during their commute to see where the heaviest traffic is coming from.

“When I drive east to Idaho at 7 in the morning, I can set my cruise control and not touch it until I hit Coeur d’Alene,” said Randy Barcus, chief economist for Avista Corp. That would be impossible for anyone going the opposite direction in the morning, he said.

But recent automatic traffic counts show the difference is smaller than anecdotal evidence suggests, said Miles, of the Spokane Regional Transportation Council.

Last Sept. 10, traffic counters at the state line on Interstate 90 tallied 10,800 vehicles heading west from Idaho during the morning rush hour. The same morning, 7,217 cars headed east into Idaho.

The Sept. 4 afternoon rush hour showed 15,155 vehicles crossing into Idaho and 12,067 vehicles driving into Spokane. That test took place on a normal Tuesday workday, Miles added.

One regional economist said Belden’s 15,000 number isn’t necessarily wrong. Jeff Zahir, a labor analyst covering Spokane for the Washington Department of Employment Security, said rush-hour commuting numbers don’t tell the whole story.

More and more companies have shifts starting at different times of the day, he said. Plus, many workers in both counties work more than one job. A worker could spend several hours in Spokane in the morning, then head to Idaho for a job that starts at 3 p.m., he said. The interstate data wouldn’t track that pattern.

The estimate of 15,000 Spokane workers heading to jobs in North Idaho comes to about 7 percent of Spokane’s total work force.

“That’s not unusual,” Zahir said. “I just don’t think many of us consider the commute a big deal anymore.”

Suzanne Phillips, a senior vice president with Belden who coordinated the Spokane and Kootenai survey, said her firm used random phone dialing followed by careful screening to find a valid, representative group of respondents.

Belden’s survey didn’t ask the same questions about commuting that census takers asked, she said. Belden asked if residents worked outside their home county, and where they lived, not where their primary job was.

That meant Spokane residents who worked in both Spokane and Kootenai counties would show up in the 15,000 number, she said, even if they worked more in Spokane.

The survey determined that about 10 percent of Spokane County’s adult work force of 288,000 people reported their jobs involved working in two or more counties, Phillips said.

The Belden survey also counted residents as working in Kootenai County even if their employer is based in Spokane but the job involved any travel into Idaho, she said.