While most places shrink as their workers head out to jobs elsewhere, some cities in the central Puget Sound region get bigger. A lot bigger.
We calculated the number of in-coming workers versus the number of out-going workers to find each city’s daytime population. Would you believe the spot with the largest percentage increase is…Tukwila?
The City of Opportunity expands 130% every weekday, adding the equivalent of a second Tukwila and then some. Even Redmond, home to Microsoft’s huge campus, can’t beat Tukwila’s percentage growth during the 9 to 5 hours.
Among the top employers Tukwila reports are Boeing, King County Metro and businesses in Westfield Southcenter Mall.
Fife is the runner-up city, growing by 109% daily (with many in-commuters likely headed to jobs at the Emerald Queen Hotel and Casino).
Redmond ranks third, with a weekday surge of 105%.
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How about the place with the highest numeric change? No surprise: Seattle blows everybody else out of the water. The Emerald City swells by 176,000 each day—that’s the equivalent of bringing over every resident of Bellevue and Issaquah.
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When its daytime population rises to 864,000, Seattle has more people than live in the City of San Francisco.
To calculate these numbers, we used American Community Survey 2013-2017 data, which are based on an average across the five-year period. View all cities that grew during the day.
Daytime population data helps cities plan infrastructure for workers and prepare for emergency evacuations.