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Tens of thousands of people commute every day from Clark County to Portland, the typical American commute from the suburbs to the city.
In recent years, there’s been a steady stream of drivers going in the opposite direction.
More than 20,000 Oregon residents have jobs in Clark County, according to the most recent Census data from 2023. That number doubled in just 20 years.
Last week, Oregon Insight examined the slowdown in the number of Washington residents commuting south into Oregon. That decline appears tied to the deteriorating labor market on the Portland side of the Columbia River.
The increase in northbound commuters is less about Portland’s recent setbacks than about Clark County’s success.
Most of that commuter growth happened in the late 2010s, a period when the whole metro area was expanding rapidly — especially around Vancouver.
Clark County added more than 40,000 jobs from 2015 through 2019, according to federal data, a torrid annual growth rate of nearly 5%.
That expansion was fueled in part by construction and health care, sectors that expanded to accommodate the county’s growing population. There’s also been strong growth in business management jobs, reflecting the growing number of companies based in Clark County.
The Vancouver waterfront, once a postindustrial wasteland, is now a thriving hub of restaurants, apartments and offices. It draws visitors from across the metro area and contributed to strong growth in Clark County hospitality jobs in the years before the pandemic.
Growth has slowed in Clark County since the pandemic and its workforce has declined in each of the past two years, according to federal data, mirroring a falloff on the Portland side of the river.
Commuters from Clark County into Oregon still outnumber those going in the other direction by nearly 3 to 1. But that ratio is the lowest it’s been since at least 2002.
Oregonians working in Washington still have to pay their home state’s income tax on the wages they earn out of state. On the upside: The drive is much quicker.
Online mapping tools suggest it frequently takes more than 40 minutes to get from downtown Portland to Vancouver during the afternoon rush hour. A Portland resident coming home from a job in Vancouver would typically spend about half as long in the car.
This is Oregon Insight, The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.
©2026 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
