Abstract: This paper studies the role of distaste for commuting as a source of monopsony power. I make two new contributions. First, I document evidence of monopsony power in a low pay UK labour market estimating both the recruitment and separation elasticity for a firm. Estimates suggest an average wage mark down of 17-25% according to the canonical model of monopsony against the perfectly competitive benchmark. Second, I develop a directed search model to formalise the potential sources of monopsony power. I show that in a setting where workers have a distaste for commuting the spatial distribution of economic activity can be a driver of monopsony power. Estimates of the commuting-wage elasticity suggest that this mechanism is important for determining monopsony power.