It’s hard to ignore the fact that almost nobody is in their office as much as they used to be. Indeed, just 5% of workers worked entirely from home before the pandemic. For over two years now, offices can’t quite surpass half-full, and more than a third of workers who can work from home do so all the time. One of the most commonly cited benefits of working outside the office is the fact that it means avoiding the slog of commuting, which can be incredibly costly both financially and time-wise.
But in a Wednesday blog post, economic blogger Kevin Drum, formerly of Mother Jones, dug into a new mystery: Somehow, commuter traffic is just as bad as it was before the pandemic. With empty offices and millions fewer people commuting during working hours now, how could that be?
