Jess Leftault, a North Portland graphic designer, is self-employed and works primarily from a second bedroom in her home equipped as a home office. (Courtesy of Jess Leftault)

For 96,000 Portland-area residents, the commute to work is as simple as rolling out of bed.

Portland's share of residents who work from home, at 7.7 percent, ranks No. 4 among the top 50 metros, behind Raleigh, North Carolina, Austin, Texas, and Denver. The numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which asks how respondents usually got to work in the prior week.

Among the reasons so many work from home in the Rose City: a high number of self-employed workers and robust technology and creative industries.

And you can't rule out the lifestyle appeal of living here, said Amy Vander Vliet, a regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department.

"A variety of factors likely contribute," she said. "It's impossible to measure and rank their impact, but I imagine our quality of life plays a large role."

That's the deciding factor for Nate Angell, who works for an education technology nonprofit out of his home in Southeast Portland.

"I moved to Portland in 1998. My wife is from here. This is where we raised our family. It's a great place to live," he said. "There's so many good things about it, it would be really hard for me to just arbitrarily move somewhere else."

When first looking for a job that would allow him to stay in the city, he found many that matched his skills weren't for local companies, rather for ones based out-of-town. The nonprofit where he now works, Hypothesis, is incorporated in California, but it has no physical headquarters -- its entire staff works remotely.

Angell said he in many ways preferred the office settings of previous jobs.

"Meeting with people and being out in the world, I miss that about not having a face-to-face job," he said.

Others seek out a home setting.

Jess Leftault, a North Portland graphic designer, used to work for a marketing agency while freelancing on the side. She struck out on her own, working from home full-time, because it allows her to be her own boss.

"I've been trying to get away from the hierarchy" of an office setting, she said. "That's not a system I work well in."

For Leftault, working from a second bedroom in her home is the only alternative while she builds up a client base that might eventually allow her to rent an office.

But her clients -- mostly small Portland companies -- have responded well, she said.

"Because I work from home, I'm able to engage with my clients in a way that's more personal," she said. "I think they kind of prefer it, because they feel like they have a direct line to me."

Not all work-from-home gigs are equal.

When Mehan Jayasuriya moved to Portland in 2016, his New York-based employer, a tech startup, agreed to let him work remotely. He, however, was the company's only remote worker.

"They'd have a meeting in person and I'd be on a laptop in the middle of the table," he said. "It was kind of miserable, honestly. I didn't feel like I was able to show up and be present in the way I'd like to be."

Now he works for the Mozilla Foundation, the charitable branch of the open-source software nonprofit with a strong culture of remote working. The company also has an office in Portland, and Jayasuriya started out commuting to work each day.

But his team is split among Mozilla locations across the country, many of them working remotely, and eventually he started working from home, too. He's found there's a large community of fellow remote-workers in Portland, and few people here bat an eye at his choice.

"It's the kind of town that tends to attract folks who are interested in working remotely," he said. "They're not interested in working in New York or San Francisco, where the big companies are, but they're interested in having the same opportunity."

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50 largest U.S. metro areas ranked by home workers

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AP Photo/Gerry Broome

1. Raleigh, North Carolina

9.1 percent work from home

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SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty Images

2. Austin, Texas

8.7 percent

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Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

3. Denver

8.5 percent

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Stephanie Yao Long/Staff/file

4. Portland

7.7 percent

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AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File

5. Tampa, Florida

7.4 percent

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images

6. Sacramento, California

7.3 percent

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"atlanta skyline" by William Brawley is licensed under CC BY 2.0

7. Atlanta

7.3 percent

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Donald Miralle/Getty Images, file

8. San Diego

6.9 percent

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AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File

9. San Francisco

6.8 percent

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Wikimedia Commons

10. Phoenix

6.8 percent

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AP Photo/Chuck Burton

11. Charlotte, North Carolina

6.7 percent

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AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

12. Salt Lake City

6.6 percent

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AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

13. Nashville, Tennessee

6.4 percent

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By Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

14. Seattle

6.3 percent

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Brian Bahr/Getty Images

15. Jacksonville, Florida

6.1 percent

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David Gannon/AFP/Getty Images

16. Washington, D.C.

6.0 percent

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AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

17. Miami

5.9 percent

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AP Photo/John Raoux

18. Orlando, Florida

5.8 percent

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AP Photo/Steve Helber

19. Richmond, Virginia

5.8 percent

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Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images, File

20. Los Angeles

5.7 percent

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KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

21. Minneapolis

5.7 percent

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Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

22. Dallas

5.6 percent

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AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

23. Boston

5.3 percent

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Fernando Leon/Getty Images for Legendary Pictures

24. Kansas City, Missouri

5.3 percent

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Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

25. Philadelphia

5.3 percent

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AP Photo/Jay LaPrete, File

26. Columbus, Ohio

5.2 percent

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By Qwerty510 (File:Riverside DSCN0700.JPG) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

27. Riverside, California

5.2 percent

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

28. San Jose, California

5.2 percent

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Chris Graythen/Getty Images

29. Indianapolis

5.2 percent

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

30. Chicago

5.1 percent

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MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

31. St. Louis

5.0 percent

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AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb

32. Hartford, Connecticut

5.0 percent

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ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images

33. Pittsburgh

4.9 percent

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Drew Angerer/Getty Images

34. Baltimore

4.9 percent

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David Goldman

35. Louisville, Kentucky

4.9 percent

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

36. Cincinnati

4.8 percent

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AP Photo/Eric Gay

37. San Antonio

4.8 percent

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Loren Elliott/Getty Images

38. Houston

4.7 percent

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TASOS KATOPODIS/AFP/Getty Images

4.7 percent

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

40. New Orleans

4.6 percent

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DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

41. New York

4.5 percent

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AP Photo/Mark Duncan

42. Cleveland

4.4 percent

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AP Photo/Victoria Arocho

43. Providence, Rhode Island

4.4 percent

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SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

44. Las Vegas

4.3 percent

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45. Oklahoma City

4.1 percent

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AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File

46. Detroit

3.9 percent

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AP Photo/Nikki Boertman

47. Memphis, Tennessee

3.7 percent

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Joe Songer/al.com

48. Birmingham, Alabama

3.7 percent

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AP Photo/Steve Helber

49. Virginia Beach, Virginia

3.4 percent

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AP Photo/Julio Cortez

50. Buffalo, New York

3.1 percent

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-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com; 503-294-5034; @enjus

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