Alison Redmond didn't know that the federal government now considers her southeastern Ohio county part of the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area based on commuting patterns in the latest U.S. census data. But she isn't surprised. She and her husband are among the Hocking County residents who drive to jobs in the Columbus area. Many Perry County residents do so as well.
Alison Redmond didn�t know that the federal government now considers her southeastern Ohio county part of the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area based on commuting patterns in the latest U.S. census data.
But she isn�t surprised. She and her husband are among the Hocking County residents who drive to jobs in the Columbus area. Many Perry County residents do so as well.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which delineates the nation�s Metropolitan Statistical Areas each decade, added Hocking and Perry counties to the Columbus metro area based on commuting patterns gleaned from the 2010 census.
�There are a lot more people making the drive over the years. There just aren�t the jobs here,� said Redmond, 45, an accountant at the County Commissioners� Association of Ohio office in Columbus. She carpools from their Logan home with husband Casey, 47, who works at the Gap warehouse in Groveport.
The addition means the Columbus metro area now covers 10 counties.
At 1.9 million people, it is third-largest in population among Ohio�s metro areas. The Cincinnati area, which includes parts of Kentucky and Indiana, has about 2.1 million people; the Cleveland metro area has about 2 million.
The government configures the country into metro areas to gather and report regional statistics on a nationally consistent basis. The statistical areas are grouped based on census population and commute-to-work data.
The government uses a formula to determine the makeup of a metro area. Counties that send at least 25 percent of workers to jobs in the urbanized core � which in central Ohio consists of Franklin, Delaware and Fairfield counties � are included in the metro area.
Although the metro areas serve purely statistical functions, they are interesting for the trends they reflect, said economist Bill LaFayette, the owner of Regionomics, a Columbus-based regional economic- and work-force-strategy company.
The Columbus area is growing while the Cleveland area is shrinking. �We are nipping at their heels,� LaFayette said. �We are going to catch up to them and pass them sooner rather than later."
Executives of companies contemplating expansion or relocation usually examine the latest metro-area data, among other factors, LaFayette said. �This makes us bigger than we were and, from a sheer size standpoint, makes us more attractive.�
The Columbus metro-area expansion shows that the Franklin-Fairfield slice of the urbanized core has become a job magnet for workers from Hocking and Perry counties, which border Fairfield County. Similarly, growth in the Delaware segment pulled in enough workers from Morrow County that it was added to the Columbus metro area 10 years ago, said Nancy Reger, deputy director of transportation at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
The continued push outward from Columbus could affect economic development and federal funding. The trend is good or bad, depending on one�s perspective, said Rachel Garshick Kleit, a city and regional planning professor at Ohio State University.
The larger metro area �is not going to cause sprawl, but it is a signal that it might be happening,� she said.
Audie Wykle, Hocking County�s regional planning director, has watched more people driving northwest for work in the past 30 years as Logan�s manufacturing jobs disappeared.
�I had long suspicioned that this would occur, that we would become more and more a bedroom community,� Wykle said. �This has been a process that has been occurring for a longer time than the last decade.�
The Rt. 33 Lancaster bypass has eased the commute for some. It takes Redmond about an hour on a good day to drive to her job in Downtown Columbus � longer if there is a crash or bad weather.
Her family is rooted in Hocking County, including a child still in high school, so the Redmonds are not inclined to move closer to their jobs. If she could find a Hocking County job earning what she makes in Columbus, she would be happy to work closer to home, she said.
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