BY HOWARD OWEN

Among the most pressing economic issues in our region are how to keep and lure jobs here and how to cut down on commuting.

We seem to be losing the battle.

There are five localities in the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance--Fredericksburg and the counties of Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline and King George. From 2002 to 2009, according to census figures, the percentage of residents in each of those localities who worked inside the FRA area decreased.

In addition to the long commutes on Interstate 95 and the loss of tax revenue from businesses, there is another downside to residents working elsewhere. Call it lack of identity.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines population centers as Metropolitan Statistical Areas. According to the OMB, a metro area consists of "one or more counties and includes the counties containing the core urban area, as well as any adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration [as measured by commuting to work] with the urban core."

Metro areas have their own identity. In our state, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Winchester, Harrisonburg and Danville have their own MSAs. The FRA's population (nearly 328,000 in 2010) is larger than each of those areas, and its gross domestic product puts it ahead of most of them. However, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania and Stafford counties are lumped into the Greater D.C. metro area, along with localities all the way to West Virginia. Caroline County is part of Richmond's MSA. King George isn't in any metro area.

The key is all those commuters. If a lot of your region's people travel somewhere else to work, you're not an MSA.

"This region could be the fourth-largest MSA in Virginia [behind D.C. and the Tidewater and Richmond areas] if it wasn't carved up," said Kevin Byrnes, director of regional planning and regional demographer for the George Washington Regional Commission, which serves the same area as the FRA. "It will never be an MSA of its own unless there is some radical change in definition and criteria."

The GWRC tries, among other things, to "make the quality of life in this region more liveable and commuting times less," but it isn't in the business of trying to lure companies here. That's one of the things the FRA does.