A challenge for any region is matching the location of where residents live and where jobs are located. On the one hand, residents typically prefer not to be too close to industrial or commercial sites. On the other hand, residents typically do not want to be too far from jobs, as this implies longer commute times. And longer commutes overall aggregate to an overtaxing of the transportation system. Thus, the “balance” between the location of jobs and housing is of considerable interest to policy makers and scholars. In this Report, we study the relationship between the location of jobs and the residential location of potential workers. We distinguish between two related concepts. First, jobs-housing ratios capture locations that are particularly job-rich versus locations that are job deserts. Second, jobs-housing imbalance captures locations that have a big difference between the number of jobs and workers.
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