Commuting—not many words or phrases arguably strike as much dread and annoyance as this one, besides maybe "root canal" or "consciously uncoupling." And the idea of commuting might be even more annoying than it was before the pandemic considering that it’s now costing Americans more money and time.
The average American shells out $8,466 and spends 239 hours commuting yearly, according to calculations of various government data from real estate agent matching service Clever Real Estate, which also gauged the best and worst cities for commuting. That’s 31% more money and 20% more time than before the pandemic; commuting cost the average worker $6,449 and 200 hours in 2019. Today's cost of getting to and from the office is about 19% of commuters’ annual income, finds Clever; that includes an average of $867 on gas and $410 on maintenance a year for a car (obviously, some commuters take public transport).
The hike in price of listening to the dulcet tones of a soft-spoken NPR host in the car is the result of several factors: 40-year-high inflation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.’s declining capacity to turn oil into gas all pushed gas prices up last year (and this year, metro fare is also set to rise in big cities like NYC). And some remote workers who moved away from high-cost cities during the pandemic are now returning to the office on a hybrid or fully in-person schedule, making the commute a bit longer (and more expensive).
With such a hefty price tag and big chunk of time, it’s no wonder many workers are so resistant to commuting back to the office as CEOs call workers back to their desks. It explains why remote work rebounded again this past winter as workers looked to cut costs during a down economy and inflation. “Working remotely is often a money saver because it reduces commuting costs to zero, while also making lunch, coffee, et cetera, much more affordable,” George Anders, LinkedIn’s senior editor at large, explained to Fortune.
Remote workers spend half the amount of money as their in-person peers, finds research from Owl Labs (granted, they have a bit of stake in the game, since they make video conferencing devices); in-person work runs a worker $863 monthly in commuting and food costs versus $432 a month when working from home. Of course, it's all dependent on the situation. Americans aren't always automatically saving money by working from home—consider that monthly electricity and gas bills are $23 higher than they were before the pandemic, per data provided to Fortune by bill pay service Doxo. It's all about the trade-offs.
But for those who do commute, it doesn't help that they sometimes end up at a largely empty office. “Nobody wants to drive to an office to do a Zoom call," Allstate CEO Tom Wilson said in an interview with Fortune Connect. “And commuting is way overrated.”
His comment is a strong departure from the opinions of many other executives, who reason that returning to office would increase worker productivity. But if these CEOs looked closer at the data, they'd find that workers waste a fair bit of time simply on the road to their jobs. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that working from home saved remote workers 72 hours in daily commute time in 2021 and 2022. Many employees, it found, actually spent that extra time working—tilting the scales of productivity toward the remote-work side.
That's not to say there aren't benefits to commuting, which can act as a "liminal space" that helps workers detach from work. But if having no commute saves workers money and time, and boosts their productivity, it makes sense that a full return to the office is just as likely to make an employee quit as a 2% or 3% pay cut. Sitting like Bob Parr, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible, in a shrinky-dink car costs thousands of dollars, after all.
