U.S. workers are playing musical chairs with their jobs at the price of less productivity and more congestion and pollution, according to new census data released this week. For example, take Arlington County, Va., where 70 percent of resident workers leave the county every day for jobs elsewhere — and an even greater number of people stream into the county to work. Unfortunately, Arlington County isn’t an exception: Around the country, 17 counties export and import at least half their workforce every weekday. And many more are following a similar pattern, with 23 percent of Americans working outside their county of residence in 2000. Jobs and workers are increasingly ending up far apart from each other, which is one reason for the nation’s “huge increase in travel time,” according to Phillip Salopek of the population division of the U.S. Census Bureau.
