Leading Question

Fuel prices are slashing the extra pay workers may be earning by traveling from Lee or Charlotte counties to Collier County, which has the region’s highest average wage, and businesses are keeping that in mind in salary negotiations.

Claudia Brooks, vice president of general contractor The Aerial Cos. in Naples, says distance is becoming a factor in job searches. A friend who commuted from Bonita Springs to Naples for another construction company recently found a job closer to home. Workers from Lee County areas such as Lehigh Acres are more reluctant to make the long commute for jobs with Aerial Cos.

Brooks has made a 44-mile drive from Cape Coral to Naples since January 2005.

"I’m happy here. I think I’m doing better here than I probably could in Lee County," she says.

If you asked Southwest Florida Workforce Development Board’s Joe Paterno three years ago if it paid to commute to Collier, the answer would have been "yes." That’s probably still the case, says Paterno, the board’s executive director, but it is becoming more affordable to live and work in Collier, where the average wage was $41,282, according to 2007 data from the state Agency for Workforce Innovation. The average wage was $37,680 in Lee and $32,835 in Charlotte.

But with Lee County’s unemployment rate at more than 6 percent, he says, "The majority are probably going to stay where they [are]."

Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization director Don Scott says traffic counts on I-75 in Lee have decreased to a maximum of 8,000 vehicles per day, which indicates a 10 percent decrease in travel between counties. The MPO’s Journey to Work survey, compiled in 2003 and based on 2000 census figures, found 14,374 daily commuters from Lee to Collier, 5,068 daily commuters from Collier to Lee, 1,447 from Lee to Charlotte, 3,646 from Charlotte to Lee, 224 from Charlotte to Collier and 79 from Collier to Charlotte.