WASHINGTON (AP) – Remember the Detroit man who walked 21 miles to work?
James Robertson’s arduous daily journey back and forth to a low-wage factory job, widely reported last month, is just an extreme version of an increasingly common problem: Finding a job near home is getting harder for millions of American workers. And long commutes are especially tough on the poor and on blacks and Hispanics.
A Brookings Institution report out Tuesday finds the number of jobs within typical commuting range dropped 7 percent between 2000 and 2012 in major U.S. metropolitan areas.
Metro jobs near poor people, many of whom cannot afford cars, fell 17 percent, versus a 6 percent drop for those who weren’t poor. Jobs near Hispanics fell 17 percent, and those near blacks dropped 14 percent.
Elizabeth Kneebone and Natalie Holmes of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program used U.S. Census Bureau data for 96 big metro areas to find how many jobs were available within each area’s median commuting distance – a figure that ranged from 12.8 miles in Atlanta to 4.7 miles in Stockton, California.