Of just 61 recorded jobs in South Prairie, 25% are in hospitality.
South Prairie contains 61 workplace jobs. Hospitality accounts for 25% of them. Manufacturing is next at 23%.
South Prairie has only 61 recorded workplace jobs, so one school, store, or worksite can dominate the 25% hospitality share. Treat it as a lead to investigate, not a durable specialization.
15% of observed resident job destinations are in Seattle, followed by Tacoma at 12%.
Current GTFS schedules 0 weekday stop departures at 0 stops inside South Prairie; that supply still needs to be tested against the route to Seattle, the largest outside job destination. Schedule supply is not ridership.
South Prairie’s population rose 68% from 2021–2026; its workplace job count fell 14% from 2018–2023. The source periods differ because the two series are released on different schedules.
South Prairie is small enough that one development or employer can swing both rates. Treat this as a change to investigate, not yet a durable trend.
630 residents are counted in the latest official state estimate, 68% more than in 2021. Survey measures appear here only when their uncertainty is small enough to describe the city confidently.
Official annual city estimate from Washington OFM.
Change in official annual city estimates; boundary changes can contribute.
Estimated share of all South Prairie residents. Each percentage uses the city’s total population as its denominator.
0% published estimate: Chinese, except Taiwanese, Hmong, Japanese, Mongolian, Okinawan, Taiwanese, Other East Asian, Burmese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Mien, Singaporean, Thai, Vietnamese, Other Southeast Asian, Asian Indian, Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Nepalese, Pakistani, Sikh, Sri Lankan, Other South Asian, Afghan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Other Central Asian, Other Asian, specified, Other Asian, not specified, Two or more Asian groups. Zero is not proof that no residents identify with that group.
Some ranges are wide, which is common for smaller populations. Treat small differences as uncertain rather than as a precise ordering.
Hospitality accounts for 25% of jobs located in South Prairie. The city’s job base changed +74% between 2010 and 2023.
Workplace jobs inside the city—not the industries of residents who commute elsewhere.
Official town employment target and downtown strategy; no ranked employer table · Historical employer snapshot · 2020 baseline; 2044 target. The source is older than the current employer publication window; headcounts are historical, not current.
Regional certification documents the employment target and downtown strategy, but no current organization-level employer ranking exists.
Puget Sound Regional Council certification of the South Prairie Comprehensive Plan ↗. Headcounts change faster than Census employment totals.
The firmer current signal is construction intent: 0 homes were authorized in 2025, versus a recent pace of about 0 per year.
Owner estimates from the 2020–2024 American Community Survey—not listings, recorded sales, or appraisals. The final Census band is open-ended: $2 million and above.
These estimates are useful as a distribution, but the survey intervals are too wide to rank South Prairie or identify one definitive value range.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-year tables B25075–B25078. Values cover owner-occupied homes only and do not measure current asking prices or recent purchase prices.
0 housing units across 0 residential buildings were authorized in 2025. 0 were in buildings with five or more units.
Authorizations are not starts or completions, but they are a more current signal of intended construction than an uncertain housing-mix estimate.
Permit authorizations—not construction starts or completed homes.
One building can contain one home or many housing units.
Average housing units authorized per year across the latest three final annual estimates.
Permit activity: U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, final annual estimate for 2025. Housing units authorized are not starts or completions.
The current covered GTFS feeds matched no scheduled stop inside South Prairie’s boundary. That does not rule out service just outside the city or service absent from the covered feeds. The 2020–2024 ACS separately estimates how workers usually commuted; it does not count every transit trip or describe today's schedule.
Scheduled stop departures in the current covered-feed snapshot—not riders.
Matched inside city limits; nearby cross-border stops are separate.
15% of observed resident job destinations in 2023 LODES.
Top observed workplace destinations.
The strongest outside connection is Seattle. Employer or corridor changes there can alter everyday life in South Prairie, even when nothing changes inside the city boundary.
South Prairie has 0 scheduled weekday stop departures at 0 stops in the current covered feeds. The household survey is too uncertain to describe the citywide commute-mode split confidently.
The useful next answer is route-specific: travel time, frequency, transfers, and walking distance from a particular home to a likely workplace.
Work destinations are selected from observed resident job flows. These are broad, reviewed planning ranges from representative parts of South Prairie—not live-traffic or door-to-door predictions.
Seattle is a LODES-selected resident workplace destination for South Prairie, representing 12% of matched resident jobs from this city.
Highway-dominant corridor: distance converted with a reviewed 1.25x circuity factor and an assumed 45 km/h peak-effective / 70 km/h off-peak effective speed, then widened and rounded to a broad band. The morning inbound peak is shown; the evening outbound return is assumed to fall within the same broad band.
Tacoma is a LODES-selected resident workplace destination for South Prairie, representing 10% of matched resident jobs from this city.
Highway-dominant corridor: distance converted with a reviewed 1.25x circuity factor and an assumed 45 km/h peak-effective / 70 km/h off-peak effective speed, then widened and rounded to a broad band. The morning inbound peak is shown; the evening outbound return is assumed to fall within the same broad band.
Auburn is a LODES-selected resident workplace destination for South Prairie, representing 5% of matched resident jobs from this city.
Highway-dominant corridor: distance converted with a reviewed 1.25x circuity factor and an assumed 45 km/h peak-effective / 70 km/h off-peak effective speed, then widened and rounded to a broad band. The morning inbound peak is shown; the evening outbound return is assumed to fall within the same broad band.
Kent is a LODES-selected resident workplace destination for South Prairie, representing 5% of matched resident jobs from this city.
Highway-dominant corridor: distance converted with a reviewed 1.25x circuity factor and an assumed 45 km/h peak-effective / 70 km/h off-peak effective speed, then widened and rounded to a broad band. The morning inbound peak is shown; the evening outbound return is assumed to fall within the same broad band.
Planning estimate; actual time varies by departure time, route, traffic, weather, incidents, and closures.
Estimates are derived from reviewed origin/destination coordinates using a documented distance-to-time heuristic (circuity factor and assumed effective speed by corridor type and period), then deliberately widened and rounded to a broad band. No live routing or traffic API was called.
Estimates reviewed 2026-09-10. Starting point: selected representative area.
Public schools, libraries, pharmacies, and listed everyday places show part of the local inventory inside South Prairie; taxable sales show the scale and direction of local commercial activity. Residents also use places across city lines, so a boundary count is not the same as access.
Care, errands, food, fitness, and personal services gathered into one browsable directory.
Counts reflect current directory records associated with the city, not a complete business census or a measure of access. Large categories show a sample.
Sources: U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), snapshot 2026-08-13; Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-08-19.0; U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (NPPES NPI Registry), snapshot 2026-09-09.
Institution counts and enrollment will remain separate. A school can serve students from outside the city, and residents may attend a school across the boundary or elsewhere in their district.
None in the current OSPI city-boundary match.
None in the current OSPI city-boundary match.
None in the current OSPI city-boundary match.
None in the current OSPI city-boundary match.
Public-school names and levels come from OSPI. Private schools, complete IPEDS college coverage, enrollment by level, and graduate destinations are active additions; absence here should not yet be read as “none.”
Retail sales per resident fall below 79% of the cities tracked by Metroscope. That may mean residents rely more on nearby cities for shopping, but sales records alone cannot prove where they shop.
Higher than 21% of 82 tracked cities.
Nominal retail-sales change; inflation can account for some or all of an increase.
Sales reported by businesses classified in retail trade.
Includes taxable activity outside retail trade.
Retailing industries’ share of all taxable sales.
Median retail sales per resident across cities with comparable data.
South Prairie voters elect the mayor separately from the council. The mayor leads city administration, while the council adopts laws, policy, and the budget—so executive accountability sits directly with an elected office.
The mayor is separately elected to lead administration.
The separately elected chief executive.
Current directory entries; vacancies or updates can make this differ from authorized seats.
Town town under Washington law.
Regular meeting schedule listed in the current municipal directory:
Schedules change and special meetings are separate. Check the city site for the live agenda, staff reports, public-comment rules, and video.
Regular municipal offices generally return in 2027. Special measures can appear earlier, and charter provisions can differ.
The next data step is city-specific turnout, contested-seat share, ballot measures, and campaign money. Until those are normalized, Metroscope links the official record instead of guessing from partisan elections.
Structure, meetings, and current officials: Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington (MRSC), checked 2026-09-08. Election administration and certified results: the county election offices listed above. Confirm live agendas and officeholders at the source.
Population and jobs do not always move together. Reading both helps distinguish a growing employment center from a city whose households are increasingly tied to opportunities elsewhere.
68% more from 2021 to 2026
14% fewer from 2018 to 2023
Nominal taxable-sales change; not adjusted for inflation.