LONGMONT - A recent study revealed that residents in Longmont are working closer to home than those in surrounding areas.

Knowing labor patterns helps communities evaluate transportation needs, the jobs-to-housing balance and future economic impacts.

The 2008 Labor Migration Profile, developed by the Boulder Regional Business Partnership, focused on work force commuting patterns for Longmont, Boulder, Broomfield, Lafayette, Louisville, Superior and Erie.

Completed in May, the profile shows that Longmont leads the other communities in local work force figures _ 45.63 percent of Longmont's jobs are filled by Longmont residents.

Boulder came in second place with 29.32 percent of its jobs held by Boulderites.

"The main reason that Longmont shows the highest percentage of people living and working in our community is that we're more of a self-contained community," said Wendi Nafziger, Longmont Area Economic Council, or LAEC, vice president. "We make a concerted effort to be a diverse community - meaning that we have lots of jobs in different fields like advanced technology and manufacturing."

Like Boulder and Broomfield, Longmont has an economic development council. Nafziger said having this type of council increases an area's chances of bringing in companies.

"What makes Longmont unique is that we focus on primary jobs, which export more than 50 percent of their products or services outside of our region, therefore bringing new money into our area," she said.

Longmont counted 189 primary employers as of April, which included three new companies: American Honda Motor Corporation, Mountain Optech Inc. and Sangat Precision. After the openings and closings of a few businesses, the city came out ahead in the first quarter 2008 with a net gain of 160 primary jobs.

The Economic Council works to recruit and retain companies in a number of ways. It invests time in trade shows, which helps to develop relationships with new companies. It works with existing primary employers to retain and grow those companies. It also uses ads and marketing programs to bring attention to the area.

The council currently works with an annual budget of $443,000, according to Nafziger.

"The money comes from several sources, including contracts for services with the city and the county as well as through private investments."

Having residents work locally provides multiple benefits to a community.

"There's less strain on the transportation system like roads and traffic, and it helps us attract other companies through our local employee base," Nafziger said. "It also helps secondary markets in the retail and service industry because most people spend money in the areas where they work - they like to eat lunch and shop close by."

About half of Longmont's Seagate Technology employees live in Longmont, according to Cindy Martini, the company's corporate communication manager. That number accounts for more than 800 out of 1,600 jobs.

"There's a high concentration of high-tech talent in this area," she said. "We invested in Longmont by building our site here in 2000. At that time, we were working a lot with John Cody (president and chief executive of the Economic Council)."

Prior to opening its facility in 2000, Seagate had rented nine Longmont buildings for close to a decade.

"In December 2007 we held a job fair at our facility here, seeking to hire 100 employees," Martini said. "We've gone beyond that number, and certainly we're focusing on this area _ we look for local talent.

"(The Economic Council) helped us with the recent job fair by being a sponsor and providing food."

DigitalGlobe Inc., another Longmont company, employs 417, according to Michelle Wisnia, the company's payroll supervisor. Less than 30 percent of the company's employees live in Longmont.

"We're compiling an existing industry report right now," Nafziger said. "We're seeing that business is good - stable with a lot of caution.

"Business growth is there in terms of sales or customers for primary employers. For primary employers, the local economy doesn't affect them as much as the national economy does."

Additional information from the Labor Migration Profile shows that Boulder has almost as many people who live in Longmont working in its community as it does people who live in Boulder.

Twice as many employees commute from Larimer County to Longmont than to Boulder. Broomfield and Denver have almost as many residents working in Lafayette as Lafayette does.

Louisville has less than 10 percent of its population working and living there.

Denver has almost the same number of employees working in Broomfield as Broomfield residents.

Metro Denver residents hold the largest percentage of jobs in Superior.

Numbers of jobs and residents for Erie are not statistically valid due to the number of Erie jobs surveyed by the Labor Migration Study. However, Erie's residents hold the highest percentage of its local jobs - 34.29 percent.

Lafayette has the second highest number of employees working in Erie.