JEFFERSON CITY – Most Southeast Missouri residents must leave their home county to find employment.
That’s one of the findings in a report from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) entitled Southeast Missouri Commuting Profiles 2025.
Southeast Commuting Profiles_2025
The Southeast Workforce Development Area (WDA) consists of 13 counties: Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Dunklin, Iron, Madison, Mississippi, New Madrid, Pemiscot, Perry, Scott, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, and Stoddard.
The region is home to Dexter, Perryville, Jackson, Sikeston, and Cape Girardeau, which is the largest city in the Southeast Region.
In 2022, 27.3 percent of employees living in the Southeast WDA commuted more than 50 miles to work, 14.9 percent of workers traveled 25 to 50 miles to work, 21.2 percent commuted 10 to 24 miles, and 36.6 percent commuted fewer than 10 miles to work.
Of the region’s residents who are in the workforce, 32.8 percent, or 37,982, commuted to jobs outside of the region.
The Southeast WDA attracted 23,948 workers from outside of the region.
More than 77,000 Southeast WDA residents lived and worked in the region.
Commuter Pattern
The top fve counties where Southeast WDA residents worked (in descending order) were Cape Girardeau, St. Francois, Scott, St. Louis County, and Stoddard. All but Cape Girardeau County had at least half of their residents commuting outside their county of residence for work.
The table below indicates that many workers commuted to another county for employment.
Larger cities, such as Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, and Perryville, attracted workers from the surrounding counties.
The counties containing these cities also had a lower percentage of workers who left the county to fnd work.
The Southeast location in the state with Interstate 55 access improves the ability of Southeast Region residents to commute to their workplaces.