Commuting Across the County Line — South Brevard, Florida

The Census Bureau's 2016-2020 commuting flows count about 3,930 residents of Brevard County, the county that holds Micco and Barefoot Bay, working in Indian River County and about 2,307 Indian River residents working in Brevard.

The southbound figure comes from the Brevard-to-Indian River row of the Census commuting flows table, which puts 3,930 Brevard residents at jobs across the line with a margin of error of 641. The northbound figure, 2,307 Indian River residents working in Brevard with a margin of 474, sits in the Indian River-to-Brevard row of the same table. Micco and Barefoot Bay commuters are inside the Brevard-to-Indian River row, but the table does not break it down below the county.

Southbound commuters outnumber northbound ones. Subtracting the two rows, 3,930 minus 2,307, leaves about 1,623 more workers leaving Brevard for Indian River County than making the reverse trip into Brevard. Both rows carry margins of several hundred workers, so the gap is an estimate, not a head count, and the county table cannot split it out for Micco, Barefoot Bay or Palm Bay.

The cross-line flow is small next to the work that stays home. The Brevard-to-Brevard row counts 234,601 residents working inside the county, and the Brevard-to-Orange row counts 8,860 heading to Orange County, more than twice the Indian River flow. Still, among Florida counties, Indian River ranks second only to Orange as a destination for Space Coast residents in this table, ahead of St. Lucie (1,159), Volusia (1,018) and Seminole (909).

Micco, the Census place that includes Barefoot Bay, has the highest out-of-county share in South Brevard: 33.5 percent of its workers held jobs in another Florida county in ACS 2020-2024 estimates.

The Micco share is the striking one. In the Micco S0801 table, 33.5 percent of the CDP's 2,375 workers worked outside their county of residence while staying in Florida, with a margin of error of 8.6 points. That is more than four times the countywide 7.1 percent in the Brevard County S0801 table. Applied to the worker count, 33.5 percent of 2,375 is about 796 Micco and Barefoot Bay workers commuting out of the county.

The survey does not name the county those Micco workers reach. Florida Statutes 7.05 runs the Brevard line due west to the mouth of the St. Sebastian River and then south along the thread of the river. The ZIP-level figure agrees with the place figure: 30.9 percent of the 2,574 workers in ZIP 32976 worked in another Florida county, according to the ZCTA 32976 S0801 table.

The share is lower in the other South Brevard places. Grant-Valkaria sends 18.7 percent of its 1,664 workers to another county (Grant-Valkaria S0801), with a wide margin of 9.4 points. Malabar and Palm Bay look like the county average: 6.8 percent of Malabar workers (Malabar S0801) and 7.1 percent of Palm Bay workers (Palm Bay S0801) work in another Florida county.

Micco commuters leave the county more often than those of any other South Brevard place in the table, yet their trips stay short: the mean travel time for Micco workers is 24.4 minutes, below the Brevard average of 25.4.

Grant-Valkaria shows the opposite pattern to Micco, with the longest mean trip in the table at 32.8 minutes and the largest work-from-home share, 27.0 percent of its workers.

The Micco workforce is small: the Micco S0801 table counts only 2,375 workers 16 and over across the CDP, which the Census geocoder shows includes 625 Barefoot Blvd., Barefoot Bay. Small numbers mean wide margins: the 11.5 percent of Micco workers reported working outside Florida carries a margin of error of 13.2 points, larger than the estimate itself, so that figure does not support any conclusion about out-of-state commuting from Micco.

Within Micco, 55.0 percent of workers held jobs inside Brevard County and 13.1 percent worked from home, according to the same Micco table. The ZIP 32976 figures for the Barefoot Bay and Micco area move in step with the CDP figures, at 58.5 percent working in Brevard and 13.8 percent working from home.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity's June 2023 Brevard report, posted on the City of Titusville website, counts 4,063 Brevard residents with primary jobs in Indian River County and 3,938 Indian River residents with primary jobs in Brevard.

The DEO work destination table ranks Indian River County fifth among the places where Space Coast residents hold primary jobs, behind Orange, Hillsborough and Seminole counties and Brevard itself. In the other direction, the DEO home destination table lists Indian River County fifth among the home counties of people employed in Brevard, after Brevard, Orange, Osceola and Volusia. By this count Brevard and Indian River counties trade workers almost evenly: 4,063 minus 3,938 is a net of only 125 workers heading south.

OnTheMap counts something different from the survey. The DEO method page explains that OnTheMap integrates state-supplied administrative records on workers and employers with federal censuses and surveys, with unemployment wage records supplied each quarter. The report's work and home destination tables count primary jobs by the county where the job is and the county where the worker lives, so they cannot show how many of those jobs belong to Micco, Barefoot Bay or Palm Bay residents.

The same report puts the whole Space Coast in context. Of the 226,055 workers living in Brevard, 75,116, or 33.2 percent, are employed outside the county, and the county has a net outflow of 20,938 workers (DEO labor inflow and outflow). The executive summary ranks Brevard 59 of 67 Florida counties for the highest outflow rate, a list on which Glades County (84.5 percent) ranks highest and Miami-Dade County (21.4 percent) has the lowest outflow rate.

For the cross-line question the two sources bracket the answer: roughly 3,900 to 4,100 Brevard residents working in Indian River County, and somewhere between about 2,300 and 3,900 Indian River residents working on the Space Coast side.

The ACS flows are survey estimates of workers 16 and over, published by the Census Bureau as 2016-2020 5-year commuting flow tables sorted by residence county and by workplace county. They carry margins of error and describe a five-year period. The OnTheMap figures in the June 2023 DEO report come from state wage records and count primary jobs. Southbound, the two agree closely (3,930 and 4,063), though neither isolates Palm Bay, Micco or Barefoot Bay commuters. Northbound they differ by more than 1,600, which is why this page states both and does not pick one. The Census Bureau produces these county flow tables every five years from non-overlapping 5-year ACS estimates, and 2016-2020 is the newest set on its commuting flows page.

Neither source breaks the flow down below the county. The place-level S0801 tables answer a narrower question for Micco, Grant-Valkaria and Malabar: what share of local workers leave the county at all. Indian River County itself sends 15.1 percent of its 65,773 workers to another Florida county, more than twice the Brevard share, according to the Indian River County S0801 table. The Sebastian S0801 table puts the Sebastian share at 19.9 percent, higher again than the Indian River County figure.

More Indian River workers commute to St. Lucie County than to Brevard. The Indian River-to-St. Lucie row counts 4,608 workers, about twice the 2,307 bound for Brevard. Inside the county, the Indian River-to-Indian River row counts 48,578 residents working at home-county jobs. The S0801 tables for Sebastian and Micco do not name destination counties, so these county rows are the only destination detail on either side of the line.