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The Village of Arlington is a small rural
community nestled in the center of some of the most prime farm land in
the state. Arlington is an attractive well kept community, which borders
such major road arteries as State Highways 22, 51 and 60 and Interstate
Highways 90 & 94. These major highways along with the close proximity to
the Dane County Airport make Arlington accessible to all and a prime
location for business.
Although the population of Arlington is
less than 1000, its location in Southern Columbia County would make it
an ideal spot to work for the 10,000 throughout the county that already
commute farther south into Madison.
The 2000 Census reported that
approximately 12,828 Columbia County residents worked outside the county
(about 48 percent of working residents). At the same time, roughly 7,078
workers from other counties commuted to jobs in Columbia County (filling
about 33 percent of the jobs located in the county). Crossing a county
line does not necessarily mean a longer commute than finding a
comparable job in the county. Roughly 58 percent of Columbia County’s
working residents traveled less than 25 minutes for work. The darker set
of bars in the graph to the right shows that about 70 percent of the
workers leaving Columbia County go to Dane County, where the
unemployment rate is usually among the lowest in the state and wages are
among the highest in the area. The concentration of professional and
technical jobs might convince some of these commuters to live in Dane
County if housing cost differentials weren’t so significant. Similarly,
Columbia County draws workers from Marquette and Adams counties where
wages tend to be lower, the unemployment rate tends to be higher and the
number of jobs is lower.
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