Is fast-growing Meridian still job-centric Boise’s bedroom? Data show big change
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- More workers now commute into Meridian than out, reversing decades of commuter trends.
- Over the past 20 years, jobs filled by residents rose faster in Meridian than peer cities.
- Employers cite Meridian's central location and commute times when choosing to expand.
Twenty years ago, it was fair to call Meridian a bedroom community, a suburb where people live but not where most of them work.
In 2002, the city was home to just over 23,000 working people, but fewer than 3,800 of them stayed to work. The other 84% commuted to jobs elsewhere, mainly in Boise.
But things are changing, according to newly released data from the Idaho Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau. As growth in the region has pushed west and commercial development has accelerated beyond Boise, Idaho’s second-largest city has added jobs, boosted wages and caught the eye of employers eager to set up shop in a central location and cut their workers’ commute times.
Now, more Meridian residents are working in the city than ever before, and not just because of population growth. In fact, the share of jobs filled by residents is growing faster in Meridian than in all other peer cities in the West, city officials say — while Boise’s has declined significantly.
To be sure, commuting continues. In 2022, over three-quarters of Meridian workers worked jobs outside the city or remotely, Census data shows. But Meridian is now a more self-sufficient city that imports more workers than it exports.
Here’s what’s shifted for workers over the past two decades of rapid growth, and what city leaders make of the changes — and anticipate next.
1. Jobs, wages up in Meridian as city grows
In his State of the City address in June, Meridian Mayor Robert Simison cited recent job and wage growth as evidence that Meridian is “truly ... built for business and designed for living.”
In 2024, Simison said, Meridian added over 1,800 jobs “created by hundreds of new businesses,” and the average wage rose nearly 5% to over $58,000.
Data from the Idaho Department of Labor shows over 74,000 people in Meridian employed as of January and a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 2.9%, compared with 3.1% in Boise and 3.8% statewide.
The Census Bureau’s most recent data on worker commuting patterns show that the number of jobs in Meridian more than tripled to more than 59,000 over the 20 years from 2002 to 2022. At the same time, the city’s population grew rapidly. From 2000 to 2020, Meridian’s population jumped 237% to more than 117,000. (It’s now over 147,000, according to estimates from the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho).
But while 59,000 people worked in Meridian, just 58,000 residents of Meridian worked. “We ... have more jobs in Meridian than people to work all of those jobs,” Simison said in his address.
2. Commuting pattern shifts in Treasure Valley
In 2002, just 16% of Meridian’s working residents had jobs in Meridian, while 56% commuted to Boise. In 2022, the percentage of Meridianites working in Meridian grew to nearly 24%, while the percentage commuting to Boise dropped to roughly 43%.
In 2021, for the first time, more people commuted to Meridian for work than out, though the margin was extremely thin — just 175 people. In 2022, roughly 1,000 more people came to Meridian for work than left.
3. Jobs filled by residents rising fast in Meridian, dropping in Boise
According to Curtis Calder, Meridian’s director of economic development, the city has been aiming not just for job growth, but growth in the number of residents who both live and work in Meridian.
“There’s this really big strategic push, as we develop our city, to create jobs where people can afford to live in Meridian and not have to commute in, or not have a need to commute out to Boise or other places,” Calder told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview.
One way to measure the city’s progress on that front, Calder said, is the share of local jobs filled by residents— a measure that factors in the number of residents who both live and work in Meridian divided by the total jobs in the city. Looking back 20 years, Calder tracked that percentage to determine: “Did we grow that base of employees that are actually living in Meridian?”
What he found was that the share rose by 3.4% from 2002 to 2022 — an amount that didn’t strike him as “remarkable” until he began comparing to other cities.
Calder compiled a list of 36 “peer cities” in the western U.S. — fast-growing cities that are major suburbs of a larger city or capital, some of a similar size to Meridian, and some with similar commuting patterns. Once he started comparing, he found that the share of Meridian jobs held by Meridianites rose by more than all other peer cities. All but one other city, Rio Rancho, New Mexico, saw their shares drop. And the city with the biggest decline? Boise, whose share of jobs held by Boiseans fell by more than 15%.
Why the relatively fast growth of jobs filled by residents in Meridian and even steeper decline in Boise?
According to Calder, some of it is population growth. Meridian, a smaller and newer city than Boise, had more land to develop into housing over the past 20 years than “an older city like Boise, that’s also experienced growth, but maybe not at as high of a rate,” Calder said. “Newer communities just have more room to build houses and apartments.”
Initially, he said, people came to Meridian “to find a house because it was cheaper than Boise.” Over time, he said, “the jobs followed the rooftops.”
And some Boiseans followed those jobs, Census data suggests. Twice as many Boiseans commuted to Meridian in 2022 as did in 2002.
4. ‘Intentional’ development draws residents, official says
Calder said the growth in jobs filled by residents is also a sign of “intentional” planning on the city’s part “to develop smartly and create open space ... (and) create transportation routes.” He noted the city’s focus on “connectivity” between subdivisions via pathways for bikes and pedestrians — rather than roads, which the Ada County Highway District controls.
“That’s one thing I think you would really notice if you took a picture of Meridian in 2022 and compared it to a picture of Meridian in 2002,” he said. “A lot of those planning efforts that were, you know, really speculative back then, really kind of came to fruition.”
Calder also pointed to the addition of open space both within subdivisions and in public parks such as Kleiner Park, which opened in 2012, and Discovery Park, which was completed in 2023. These amenities, he said, have attracted not just residents but employers.
“One of the things that a lot of economic developers don’t focus on is that quality-of-life aspect,” Calder said. “But to some degree, to attract a business to your community is kind of like attracting a resident to your community.
“It’s not all about the money. It’s about, ‘Where are my employees going to spend their free time? How close will we be to good schools? How close are we to the freeway?’ You know, all of those things kind of go into those calculations (for) businesses, where they choose to locate.”
5. Businesses seek central location as traffic in Valley grows
Calder said several of Meridian’s newer businesses have voiced that the city’s central location was a major factor in their decision to open in Meridian, especially as growth is felt on the region’s increasingly congested roads and more people are factoring commute times into decisions about where to live or work.
“One of the main things (businesses) always comment on ... They go, ‘It’s the center of the Valley, and it’s so much easier for our employees to get to work,’” Calder said.
Calder nodded to Red Aspen, a Boise cosmetics startup that built a new headquarters on Overland Road in 2022, and JST Manufacturing, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer, which in 2021 consolidated three sites into one near the corner of Franklin and Eagle roads on Meridian’s eastern border.
In his State of the City address, Simison noted that JST employed 71 people when it opened in Meridian but now has over 200. In roughly the last year, Simison said, businesses that have expanded or opened in Meridian include Okland Construction, Ardurra, Tesla and Fast Eddy’s.
Looking ahead
Calder said available land and traffic congestion could affect growth and commuting patterns in the Treasure Valley. “Over time, if this is gonna continue to grow this way — I mean, can people legitimately get from Caldwell to Boise every morning and not take two hours getting there?”
Transportation leaders, such as in the highway district and Idaho Transportation Department, Calder said, are looking at ways to alleviate congestion, such as through the expansion of Idaho 16. Expanding Interstate 84 or establishing passenger rail would drastically change commuting if they came to fruition, Calder said.
Even in Meridian, land for development is finite. Meridian is now surrounded by four cities — Kuna, Boise, Eagle and Nampa — experiencing their own growing pains.
“A lot of communities are surrounded, for example, by public land like (Bureau of Land Management) land, and they can go through process to acquire the land and then sell it off for development purposes,” Calder said. That’s not the case in Meridian.
The fast pace of Meridian’s growth is “unsustainable,” Calder said, and eventually, the city could reach the point where it could only do “infill” development or redevelopment. That’s still several decades away, he estimates.
Meridian’s top 10 employers in 2024
At the Statesman’s request, the Idaho Department of Labor provided a list of Meridian’s biggest employers in 2024, using employment ranges rather than precise counts.
The list has a few caveats, said Jan Roeser, a labor economist and communications officer for the department, in an email to the Statesman. The ranges are sourced from quarterly tax documents, and employers must give their permission for the department to release their names. The department also doesn’t require employers to break down their employee counts by different cities and counties if they have multiple sites, Roeser said.
For example, most schools in the West Ada School District are located in Meridian, but the district crosses into Eagle, Star, West Boise and parts of Unincorporated Ada County.
West Ada led employment in Meridian as of the Statesman’s last roundup of top employers in the city in 2023, based on 2022 data. One notable difference is that Scentsy dropped from a range of 1,000-1,500 employees to 500-1,000, after “attrition” and layoffs earlier this year. Another top employer, Blue Cross of Idaho, announced over 100 layoffs in April.
This story was originally published July 14, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
