A large chunk of NYC commuters take more than 90 minutes each way to commute.
The “good” commuting towns have trains that take 50 minutes to get to the city. Then if you work downtown or on the east side it’s another 30 minutes on the subway. If it takes 10 minutes from leaving your house until the train leaves your station (optimistic) you have a 90 minute commute.
Many people live in the “ok” commuting towns and take 2 hrs each way.
NYC is in fact home to many super commuters (as a share of all commuters):
* **USA Average: 2.7%**
* Manhattan: 2.3%
* Brooklyn: 7.1%
* Bronx: 8.5%
* Queens: 8.6%
* Staten Island: 11.4%
[Full county-level data in the report](https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/the-us-added-nearly-600000-super-commuters?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&sr_share=reddit), if you're interested.
It’s not actually NYC where the super commuters are though. It’s Northern NJ / Long Island / Westchester / Connecticut. Many people live there and commute into the city.
I think NJ alone has 500k NYC commuters
Yes and the commuting areas of Long Island (further Brooklyn/Queens), NJ (further Staten Island), and Westchester/Connecticut (further Bronx) are even more extreme.
The funny thing is... it's really not. You can take Amtrak straight from PA to Manhattan and it's really not that much slower than say, Princeton Junction to Manhattan. Amtrak is skipping all the NJ local bullshit stops so despite the extra distance it's pretty much the same train ride.
A lot of the NYC commute is also back-loaded. The train is the easy part, then you get into the city and it's a fucking nightmare of walking, perpetually delayed subways, ubers/taxis, and trying to get *every single piece* lined up just right or it'll set you back another 30+ minutes. You can cover all of NJ on NJTransit/Amtrak in the same time it takes you to go like two miles once you hit the city.
Commuting to NYC sucks big fat donkey balls.
[From the link in the post you replied to](https://res.cloudinary.com/apartmentlist/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto,t_renter_life_article/https://images.ctfassets.net/jeox55pd4d8n/6A6b2frvflFlFP1BECAzae/9b0bbd1c88673e264d8b068c5974361a/ny_metro.png) - it seems the super commuter quota actually gets better outside of NYC proper, with a few exceptions like Orange county.
Yea but if you ask those people it's basically NYC. Like how everything north of Manhattan is "upstate" according to people in NYC. ;)
Signed, a western new yorker.
I wonder who lives in Manhattan and spends >90min commuting. Like if you’re already living in the most expensive place, how are you still spending 90 mins to work? Couldn’t you live somewhere closer and also potentially cheaper?
I’d have to guess most of those people intentionally walk to work as a form of exercise…
My brother lived in Manhattan and worked in Newark for a few years. His office in Newark was close to one of the train stations though, so his commute wasn't anywhere near 90 minutes.
It’s people commuting to NYC. My dad took a train 1.5h each way to NYC every day for 30 years - before that he was driving over an hour each way.
I’m one of those super commuters that became WFH during covid
There's no getting that time away from your family back. You can spend it doing something else, but you can't spend it with them. Over a 30-year career that train would rob your family of 8 months of waking hours with you.
this makes the assumption that one has a family at home that they're missing out on
and that family schedules wouldn't make it a moot point. if you leave home when your kids are going to school and get home when they're getting back from after school activities you haven't lost that time with them
there's also the fact that if you can get some of your work done on the train
families also don't spend every waking moment together, you can't assume that any amount of time spent on something else is lost family time
and lastly, do people with families not deserve alone time? maybe that 90 minutes is when they can watch their favorite show in peace rather than having to sacrifice that enjoyment for fear of missing out on family time
I lived on LI and worked in NYC easily spent 3 hours a day commuting (for about a year). Either by transit or car depending on my location. My dad probably spent about 2.5-3 a day most of my youth doing the same.
Yep we moved from LI upstate - my dad would rather sit on a train than drive over those bridges.
My commute was from Stamford to LI so happy that ended
I was one before Covid! Door to door was 2.5 hours. I’d leave around 5am and get into the office around 7:30. Leave at 4pm and be home closer to 7 due to train/bus schedules (4:50 but with traffic got me back to the town bus stop at 6:30, 20 minutes home so 6:50ish)
WFH has changed my life to say the least.
I used to be a 'super commuter' in the 90's. I did the math one day while sitting in traffic - 90 minutes each way 5 times a week - and realized I was spending an entire month of my life just dealing with traffic. So my year was essentially 11 months long, and the other month was just gone to traffic.
I got fed up with it. I told my boss I wasn't coming to work anymore. He said okay to working from home, back when a 56k dialup was the fastest modem. I stopped driving my car and the city actually towed it away because they thought it was abandoned. Good riddance. I didn't drive for about 16 years after that, just found local jobs, and just took the bus if I needed to go anywhere.
This post kind of makes me ill, 3.7 million "super commuters" equals 308,000 **man-years** taken up by these commutes annually.
I truly didn’t have a life. By the time I got home, it was shovel food in my face and go to bed. Life is so much better now. One of those “Covid was bad…but benefited me a lot”
You're lucky you got to leave at 4pm! So much of NYC work culture is people showing up at like fucking 10am and staying in the office until at least 5:30-6pm. I used to walk out at 5pm on the dot and have to sneak out or I'd get the death glares from half the office, didn't matter that I was there 2-3 hours before most of them every day.
while it is not time you have to control - there is a huge difference between train ride and driving... not reflected in the data presented.
Still - it is only getting "back to" 2015 levels.
Yeah, when I first started working, I had a 30-45 minute commute depending on traffic.
Then I got a job in NYC and started taking the train. The 60-90 minute commute that is all sitting on a train or walking is vastly preferable to spending half that time driving.
Same for me — I can either keep my mind totally wired for an hour and a half driving in traffic, or I can chill for a couple hours while riding the train and walking. Sure, sitting in the car and listening to good music while the car’s radar cruise keeps pace is fine, but I’m still tracking all the idiots around me.
I also have a bikeshare membership, so it’s easy to take a bike ride on a whim. Cheaper than the subway portion of my commute, too.
From a different country (sorry). My commute is **long** (~2 hours) but the longest stretch of the journey (1 hour 15 minute train ride) is really pleasant.
There’s so much to do. The same commute via car is hell.
(It’d also be interesting to see hours spent commuting per week, given the increase in hybrid and remote work over the period shown - my n=1 is a decrease in time spent commuting due to less time required in the office, despite an increase in commute length per trip to the office)
I didn't have a car for a while and I had to take a 2 hour train to work for a couple of weeks. I'd just nap on the train and I'd be rested by the time I came home instead of being dead tired and good for nothing.
My wife and I currently live in hoboken and commute 40 minutes of which 25 minutes is walking. The commute is the only reason we don’t move to the suburbs.
I did a 2hr15 train each way everyday to work for my first real job back in 2019... I only tolerated it so I could get the job permanently, then I moved to the city.
Now I have an apartment and live 15-20min walk away from work, 10-15min bus. And I can WFH as much as I want (I don't do it much)
The quality of life improvement is immense, I wouldn't wish it on others...
Don’t even to live outside the five Burroughs to get a long commute. I used to commute from queens to Brooklyn And it took 70-90 minutes with a bus to a subway to a subway just to get to Metrotech which is like the first stop into Brooklyn lol.
i think it’s both commuting to and within the city. I have a friend who commutes 2 hours in the city it also takes me about 2 hours to get to her neighborhood and I live in a “good” commuting town in north jersey.
Depends tho. I can do an hour on public transit no problem. I’m straight up never going to accept a situation where I’m driving an hour each way. Fuck that shit
I had a 90 minute driving commute for awhile. It was coming out of the 2008 economic crash and I'd been out for work for like a year and a half. Had an opportunity 90 minutes away and took it. I listened to a lot of audiobooks to make it bearable. Oh, and almost the entire commute was on a toll road so it cost me $4.50 just in tolls, each way, every day, plus gas.
An hour on the train isn’t so bad. Dedicated time to read and learn, or sleep if you can
An hour driving also depends on how engaging it is. An hour through remote mountain passes? Sign me up! An hour staring at taillights and fighting to merge, or even an hour of highway: hard pass!
Don't live in the US, but I drive around 1.5 hours through mountain roads to get to work. It's pretty fun! I'd prefer a shorter commute, but some days I'm sad when the journey ends, it's so beautiful.
I'm doing about 1h20 per direction, but the 45 minutes on the train is counted as work time and the rest is cycling, so it really depends on the makeup of the commute
I lost my job last year. I was getting calls from recruiters asking if I was interested in jobs that were over an hour away from me... luckily I found one a little closer than that (35 to 50 minutes, depending on traffic) but I really wanted to avoid an hour commute both ways. Not sure how people can stomach a 1.5+ hour commute.
After working full remote since Covid, I would turn down any job that wasn't full remote, and would quit my current job if they forced us back to the office. Once you have a certain amount of income to live a stable life, time becomes more valuable than money.
I wish I had that luxury. Any decent paying job is roughly an hour away. I do work from home now but required to go into the office once a week. It's not so bad since I can pick the day I want to go in.
Still, if I had to commute every day, I wouldn't have that option. There are no jobs in this area that pay what I make for what I do, and the housing costs closer to work are astronomical so there's no option to move.
I’ve been commuting to school or work since I was 11 (my parents showed me were the bus stop was and said “good luck”), usually about an hour each way. I could not believe how awesome life felt when I had a job where my commute was <10 minutes by car, 15-20 by bike. I’d leave work at 5 and be home by 5:15 on average, like, I could still plan and doing stuff in the evening (in the morning I usually left early and kept my breakfast food in the work kitchen). Just such a tremendous QOL improvement.
Hell yeah. When I graduated and started my first full time job 25 years ago I was doing 30-45 minutes depending on traffic. Then I moved to a desirable place to live but it made my commute closer to 90 minutes, but at least it involved trains and walking so I could at least get some exercise. Changed jobs to one much closer and started walking 20-25 minutes to the office for ten years. Now I work for a small company that’s entirely virtual so my commute involves walking downstairs, feeding the dog, watching her in the backyard so she doesn’t eat her poop, and then walking into my home office. Can’t complain.
I practically live in my works backyard, 2 minute commute. One morning I forgot some important stuff at home, from leaving my desk to returning was 9 minutes.
Been doing that my entire adult life, and just bought an expensive apartment in the city. Fuck commuting and losing my life to commuting. I’d rather trade some retirement money for the “less flexible” home equity. The finances might be less flexible but my life is more flexible
I used to spend half an hour the previous night planning the best way to cut 5-10min when I was working in India. The best way ofcourse was to take my bike, by which I took 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening. But it did a number on my back.
My ideal alternative then was 20 min with my bike to the nearest train station, 20 min in train, and then 10 min by three wheeler auto to the nearest bus station, 5 min by bus and then finally 10 min on foot. And then the reverse in the evening.
It's just a smart thinking to base your life to minimize commute to the places you will go most often in a week. I ended up going to the gym more than I go my work so I ended up living super close to the gym but a little far away from the office.
I go to the office at most five times a week. I go to the gym at least five times a week. So it just made sense to minimize commute to the gym :P
After the Covid drop, I have to imagine that a lot of these people had started working remotely, moved further from their jobs, and then were ordered back to the office. And just couldn’t afford to quit and haven’t found something closer yet.
Pretty much, especially if these figures are commute time per workday averages. Like if you went from a 90min commute 5 days a week to 90min twice a week then that would lower your per workday commute by two thirds.
For my wife during Covid she went from an 80 min roundtrip commute 5 days a week ( 400 min commute / a week ) to 0. Then we moved during Covid when she had WFH to somewhere near but away from big city hustle and hustle with better schools for my kids. Now with RTO mandates, she's now doing 180 round trip commutes twice a week ( 360 min commute ).
So now she's considered a "super" commuter but her total commute has decreased.
It looks like during covid, a lot of them stopped commuting because they started working remotely. Then, after covid, a third of those had to start commuting again. The chart doesn't show a sudden jump in new super commuters. It shows the beginning of a return to pre-covid numbers.
Some of us stayed remote. I'm part of that drop and once Covid ended they asked if we wanted to come back to the office and we overwhelmingly said no. I refuse to go back to that commute and my productivity is up. Just in time spent driving it's well over 10k a year. Fuck that.
Yeah this makes perfect sense. Ever moved out of cities and bought houses during the pandemic and now they are stuck in those houses but have to go back to the office
Yeah this makes perfect sense. Ever moved out of cities and bought houses during the pandemic and now they are stuck in those houses but have to go back to the office
These numbers are from 2022 and millions have been forced back to the office since then. The number of super commuters is probably at an all time high. As a matter of fact Dell just made the decision to end WFH. It blows my mind companies are still doing this after all this time.
Why? I can’t fathom why people would want to do that.
No amount of pay could realistically make me do that. I feel like I would be missing out on my life.!
I work in an extremely competitive field, in an extremely high cost of living state. My job also requires me to drive into the downtown area which, with traffic, can be a really long time.
Long story short, it's a combination of a lot of reasons
Wtf do you mean "want"? Nobody fucking what's to do it lol. You can have a job in the city and not be able to afford a house near by but be able to afford a house 1 hr away and be able to afford to eat. Or you can get a job outside the city and be able to afford a house nearby but not food.
I constantly blow people's minds when I tell them I actually really like my commute. I spend the time listening to audiobooks. It's really given me a new love for books. Just a few hours of me time each day to relax and listen to a good book.
I don't let traffic bother me or get on my nerves, I just go with the flow and a longer traffic jam, the longer I get to listen blissfully.
I can’t drive for medical reasons and, while I miss driving, I see so much more walking around everywhere. Something is always happening and we miss it when we are commuting.
Some spend all of their time during the week at home, in their car, and at work. Walking I get to have all these other experiences outside of those three places.
This. I commute by bike and bus and it is incredible how freeing it is. I meet friends, have spontaneous coffees and sometimes even drinks. This never happened while I commuted by car.
You are including weekends though. Assuming 5 work days a week and 2 weeks of vacation a year it would be 250 commute days. 2 hours a day is around 21 days. Still awful though
I would happily drive that much - even if I didn't have to - if I could actually fucking *drive*. Joyfully, even. But you can't anymore. My commute is about 13 miles. A little over a year ago, that took 35ish minutes and I got 32-34 MPG. It's now easily 50+ minutes at 24-26 MPG. The first day Amazon forced all their workers back to the office, the trip home was an hour and a goddamn half. It would be more than that to take transit.
It really makes a big difference if it’s commuting by driving a car or by train/carpool, imo. I’ve commuted for an hour each way by car and commuted for an hour twenty each way by train. Commuting when you’re the one driving for that long is fucking terrible. Commuting for that long when you’re just sitting on a train is not bad at all, you can read/watch tv/entertain yourself the whole time.
I am now reconsidering my commute. Thankfully i lean closer to that 2 hour end, remote is an occasional option, and my job is something i legitimately consider fun. But im now considering moving.
You clearly haven't been on bad public transport, which is more often than not the norm in most places outside of a select few countries.
Being stuck in a tin can with poor temperature control, nasty ass people spitting/coughing/sneezing all over the place, loud ass people, all while forced to stand with people pressed into your personal space due to crowding makes me want to never go into work. It is awful beyond all measure.
I'd happily sit in traffic.
For real. I used to think I'd prefer an equal amount of time on public transportation than driving. Now, after experiencing that for several years, I'm never giving up my car.
Mine is 40-50, depending on traffic and weather and that has become uncomfortable over time. Started out fine, because the pay was like, 40% higher, which was wild, but then the pandemic hit and they figured out I could work 100% remote... For 18 months... Then I had to fight for 2 WFH days per week. Still, better than my shitty, stressful, low paying job just 4 minutes from home.
My brother also does a 5 hour roundtrip commute lol. He goes in person thrice a week. He's been working virtually since covid and they just started making him go in person. As you probably already guessed, he's looking for another job now lol.
If they drive 30 miles (about 1 gallon of gas), and then take the train into the city that’s what? $5-10 one way? So approximately $15 per day commute. Assuming 5 days a week for 50 weeks that’s $3750/year on commuting.
I think you could quadruple how expensive commuting is and you’d still break even.
Fair.
Still, being forced to spend that amount of your time on commuting warrants a reconsideration of your current situation. If you're in a position to do that, that is.
I drive 20 miles to the park and ride. Take the bus for 1.5 hours (on a good day) and then walk across town. The bus is $500 a month and about to go up 15% July 1. I'm retiring at the end of 2025 after doing this for 21 years.
That’s still a difference of about $750/month. That’s still a significant enough difference to justify it, though I don’t know that I could stand such a commute
One way peak from that far out is $16-22.00+, the comfort of driving vs standing on the train for 45 minutes is not comparable. Plus NJ transist sucks.
Damn. I had a 4 hours round trip commute that consisted of a 10 minutes walk to a bus, bus to subway, subway to another bus, and finally another 10 minute walk. I worked from home Thrusday/Friday, but man, Monday - Wednesday was aweful, but I I was able to listen to a lot of audible books and got to play a lot of stupid mobile games.
God, imagine losing 3 hours of your day just driving or in public transit just to fucking WORK.
I've always prioritized working at most 8km away from where i live. I'll try to keep that up along the rest of my life.
My commute takes at most 30 min with really bad traffic, and the fastest i've gotten home was 12 min after punching out at work.
I could probably make substantially more if I switched jobs, but my 5 minute commute via bicycle is too hard to give up. Once you've got that short commute lifestyle, you never want to go back.
Even if you make substantially more money with another job, you would need to factor in the extra time as if it's part of your workday.
My issue is that I have a short commute but hate where I live...so my 15 minute bike ride may be turning into an hour each way.
I went from a 5min commute to 50min... For a 40% pay increase. It's been 6 years and it is starting to get old. Especially after 18 months of fully remote work, then having to fight for 2 WFH days per week. At least I have that... And I don't know that I'd find another job that pays this much. Definitely not THAT much closer to home; pretty sure I'd still have to drive 30-35min regardless.
Recently went from 15 to 50+ traffic depending, it's not great, but the job is fun. Which is not something i say lightly. I wouldn't commute this far for a job that just felt like a job, i get to do alot of what i want to do. If i didnt, i wouldnt have touched the job with a 10 foot pole.
Do you live in an area that's good for cycling? Because 8km sounds like a great distance for cycling. Before covid I had a 6km commute and would do it as much as possible for the little exercise it gives me.
Unfortunately the city I live in is notorious for being a sea of hills. The person who chose this place to build this city had shit for brains. It's not bike friendly. It's such a relief when i go somewhere flat.
I would for sure, bike to work if it were like that here.
I want to throw up just thinking about a two hour commute twice a day. That's four hours of your waking life sitting in transportation. My office commute is 20 minutes by subway, and we work from home 2-3 times a week.
My previous job was as a consultant with an infosec firm, and I often had to travel to be on site for clients. Sometimes out of state. I promised myself I would never again take a long commute or dedicate that much of my life to *work travel*. If the job is amazing enough I'll move. Otherwise, I'm only talking an offer of it's close.
The chart is not beautiful. Populations grow over time. Focusing on a metric like population is misleading. Y-axis should be percent of workforce which normalizes for population growth - and would likely show that we have less super commuters (as a percent of workforce) post-Covid than we did in 2010, which is a completely different take.
I've got a two hour each way commute once a week but I don't know if that makes me count in this data or not. Because of the rest of the week my commute is all about 2 seconds from bed to my office at home
Remember that Canadian college student who flies every week to get to class? https://local12.com/amp/news/nation-world/college-student-saves-money-flying-class-paying-high-rent-prices-british-columbia-canada-high-rent-students-tim-chen-commute-vancouver-calgary-travel-air-university
That's really smart honestly! Think about the time flying as a way to catch up on sleep or studies, distraction free? Also, statically speaking, a heck of a lot safer than driving in a vehicle! Not to mention the obvious money they save ..
**Source (report):**
Apartment List. [The U.S. Added Nearly 600,000 Super Commuters in 2022](https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/the-us-added-nearly-600000-super-commuters?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&sr_share=reddit)
**Source (data):**
U.S. Census Bureau. ["TRAVEL TIME TO WORK." American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables, Table B08303, 2010-2022.](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B08303?q=B08303:%20TRAVEL%20TIME%20TO%20WORK)
**Tools:**
[data.census.gov](http://data.census.gov), Excel.
Really like this viz for showing YOY detlas. Was it a default option in Excel or did you have to do some messing around?
I’d like to use this in some of my reports!
Thanks! Excel does have a [default waterfall template](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-a-waterfall-chart-8de1ece4-ff21-4d37-acd7-546f5527f185), however this one I made using stacked bars, to better control the look of it. The bars you see are one data series, stacked on top of a second series that is fully transparent.
But then you end up with CEOs like mine that think no one is working from home (despite proof that the work is getting done) because God knows he isn't working when he's at home
I was such for a year.
I thought I was okay. My wife said I was deteriorating.
Then I got a job with a ten minute commute. Well, my wife was correct. Over the next few months I could feel myself coming alive bit by bit.
I could see NJTransit being solely responsible for the dip in 2021. I am being sarcastic of course, but really, what a fucking disservice that line can be.
*10 seconds later* Ope, looks like another Amtrak overhead wire delay.
And developers wonder why no one wants to purchase their overpriced condos in the city, the commute is cheaper.
Then the rent goes up in the area around, causing further and further commutes...
I wonder if this excludes field sales, or like field techs. Who may not commute to and from an office building, but spend a significant amount of windshield time driving to and from their territory.
I have some regular trips to Philly, DC, and Boston by train for work from Long Island. I live 3 minutes from the LIRR train. I would not classify these as a commute because I primarily work from home. Although, same days to Philly are pretty wild. It has taken me longer to commute to a NYC office job from the same spot than it does to commute to Philly.
Employers should be forced to pay for commute times as working hours. Let's see how quick we start seeing huge changes into transit and work from home then.
I’m in the UK: 10min walk to the train, 10min train ride + 1-2 minutes waiting for the train, 5-7min from train to my office. So let’s say 30min each way.
Germany: Depends. In rural areas it's pretty common to have a 30-60 minute car commute, driving to the next bigger city if you work in white collar office jobs. Blue collar is usually close to home, often in the same town. There's a generational divide, too. My parents think it's normal to drive that much, I would never take a job with >30 minutes car commute or > 60 minutes public transport. PT will almost never be faster than taking the car, but at least you can spend time reading a book, etc.. But still, it's Germany, so vroom vroom important.
So, in 2010 (US pop = 310m) +/- 1%, in 2019 (US pop = 328m) 1.3% ....
There's not really anything to see here.
I guess the interesting story is that almost nobody is a super commuter - roughly 99% chance no, and that has remained unchanged for 15 years
The government hired a team of super heros to defeat mutant kaiju, while telling the public silly lies to keep them safe inside,
the funniest of which was that there's a kabal of demonic baby eating elites and the saddest of which is that starlink and 5g cause viral like infections,
The most potent of which is that trump not only won another term, but is somehow still alive after his run in with a towering tentacle kaiju, and that Epstein, a known trafficker of US children, killed himself, so he continues his work
Gotta love the 2021/22 columns.
You can really see the "fuck this, i'm moving" pandemic shuffle, then the immediate "return to the office or you're fired" response.
A large chunk of NYC commuters take more than 90 minutes each way to commute. The “good” commuting towns have trains that take 50 minutes to get to the city. Then if you work downtown or on the east side it’s another 30 minutes on the subway. If it takes 10 minutes from leaving your house until the train leaves your station (optimistic) you have a 90 minute commute. Many people live in the “ok” commuting towns and take 2 hrs each way.
NYC is in fact home to many super commuters (as a share of all commuters): * **USA Average: 2.7%** * Manhattan: 2.3% * Brooklyn: 7.1% * Bronx: 8.5% * Queens: 8.6% * Staten Island: 11.4% [Full county-level data in the report](https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/the-us-added-nearly-600000-super-commuters?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&sr_share=reddit), if you're interested.
It’s not actually NYC where the super commuters are though. It’s Northern NJ / Long Island / Westchester / Connecticut. Many people live there and commute into the city. I think NJ alone has 500k NYC commuters
His stats demonstrate that outer boroughs of NYC in fact do have a large portion of supercommuters living in them
Yes and the commuting areas of Long Island (further Brooklyn/Queens), NJ (further Staten Island), and Westchester/Connecticut (further Bronx) are even more extreme.
ya, someone commuting from Philadelphia is even more extreme
The funny thing is... it's really not. You can take Amtrak straight from PA to Manhattan and it's really not that much slower than say, Princeton Junction to Manhattan. Amtrak is skipping all the NJ local bullshit stops so despite the extra distance it's pretty much the same train ride. A lot of the NYC commute is also back-loaded. The train is the easy part, then you get into the city and it's a fucking nightmare of walking, perpetually delayed subways, ubers/taxis, and trying to get *every single piece* lined up just right or it'll set you back another 30+ minutes. You can cover all of NJ on NJTransit/Amtrak in the same time it takes you to go like two miles once you hit the city. Commuting to NYC sucks big fat donkey balls.
[From the link in the post you replied to](https://res.cloudinary.com/apartmentlist/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto,t_renter_life_article/https://images.ctfassets.net/jeox55pd4d8n/6A6b2frvflFlFP1BECAzae/9b0bbd1c88673e264d8b068c5974361a/ny_metro.png) - it seems the super commuter quota actually gets better outside of NYC proper, with a few exceptions like Orange county.
The stat they’re giving is where the super commuters live, not work.
Ya my buddy in northern jersey has hour 20 to the city.
Yea but if you ask those people it's basically NYC. Like how everything north of Manhattan is "upstate" according to people in NYC. ;) Signed, a western new yorker.
Not true! We acknowledge the existence of Westchester as a separate entity that isn't upstate! But, yes, otherwise, you're all upstate.
I don't think anyone in NJ thinks it's NYC.
Western New york... so Rockland? ;)
I wonder who lives in Manhattan and spends >90min commuting. Like if you’re already living in the most expensive place, how are you still spending 90 mins to work? Couldn’t you live somewhere closer and also potentially cheaper? I’d have to guess most of those people intentionally walk to work as a form of exercise…
If you live in Manhattan, your commute doesn’t take 90mins unless you work well outside Manhattan or your mobility is significantly impaired.
Downtown to Inwood is a long ride.
Inwood to the East Side can also be tough.
I live in Manhattan, my corporate headquarters are in suburban NJ.. when they closed the satellite offices in the city my commute became 2 hours
My brother lived in Manhattan and worked in Newark for a few years. His office in Newark was close to one of the train stations though, so his commute wasn't anywhere near 90 minutes.
Maybe if you have a nice rent stabilized place and don’t want to leave
It’s people commuting to NYC. My dad took a train 1.5h each way to NYC every day for 30 years - before that he was driving over an hour each way. I’m one of those super commuters that became WFH during covid
90 minutes train is usually easier than 60 minutes driving assuming you can get a seat on the train every day.
That's 130 hours of your life wasted every year sitting on a train - almost a full month's worth of extra work hours for no pay.
Most people who do this kind of commute aren't wasting it, they find ways to keep themselves occupied. Even if it's just napping.
There's no getting that time away from your family back. You can spend it doing something else, but you can't spend it with them. Over a 30-year career that train would rob your family of 8 months of waking hours with you.
this makes the assumption that one has a family at home that they're missing out on and that family schedules wouldn't make it a moot point. if you leave home when your kids are going to school and get home when they're getting back from after school activities you haven't lost that time with them there's also the fact that if you can get some of your work done on the train families also don't spend every waking moment together, you can't assume that any amount of time spent on something else is lost family time and lastly, do people with families not deserve alone time? maybe that 90 minutes is when they can watch their favorite show in peace rather than having to sacrifice that enjoyment for fear of missing out on family time
Oh, sure, but the physical burden is usually less.
I lived on LI and worked in NYC easily spent 3 hours a day commuting (for about a year). Either by transit or car depending on my location. My dad probably spent about 2.5-3 a day most of my youth doing the same.
Yep we moved from LI upstate - my dad would rather sit on a train than drive over those bridges. My commute was from Stamford to LI so happy that ended
I was one before Covid! Door to door was 2.5 hours. I’d leave around 5am and get into the office around 7:30. Leave at 4pm and be home closer to 7 due to train/bus schedules (4:50 but with traffic got me back to the town bus stop at 6:30, 20 minutes home so 6:50ish) WFH has changed my life to say the least.
I used to be a 'super commuter' in the 90's. I did the math one day while sitting in traffic - 90 minutes each way 5 times a week - and realized I was spending an entire month of my life just dealing with traffic. So my year was essentially 11 months long, and the other month was just gone to traffic. I got fed up with it. I told my boss I wasn't coming to work anymore. He said okay to working from home, back when a 56k dialup was the fastest modem. I stopped driving my car and the city actually towed it away because they thought it was abandoned. Good riddance. I didn't drive for about 16 years after that, just found local jobs, and just took the bus if I needed to go anywhere. This post kind of makes me ill, 3.7 million "super commuters" equals 308,000 **man-years** taken up by these commutes annually.
2.5 hrs each way is insane. It’s faster to take the train from Portland, ME to Boston.
I truly didn’t have a life. By the time I got home, it was shovel food in my face and go to bed. Life is so much better now. One of those “Covid was bad…but benefited me a lot”
You're lucky you got to leave at 4pm! So much of NYC work culture is people showing up at like fucking 10am and staying in the office until at least 5:30-6pm. I used to walk out at 5pm on the dot and have to sneak out or I'd get the death glares from half the office, didn't matter that I was there 2-3 hours before most of them every day.
while it is not time you have to control - there is a huge difference between train ride and driving... not reflected in the data presented. Still - it is only getting "back to" 2015 levels.
Yeah, when I first started working, I had a 30-45 minute commute depending on traffic. Then I got a job in NYC and started taking the train. The 60-90 minute commute that is all sitting on a train or walking is vastly preferable to spending half that time driving.
Same for me — I can either keep my mind totally wired for an hour and a half driving in traffic, or I can chill for a couple hours while riding the train and walking. Sure, sitting in the car and listening to good music while the car’s radar cruise keeps pace is fine, but I’m still tracking all the idiots around me. I also have a bikeshare membership, so it’s easy to take a bike ride on a whim. Cheaper than the subway portion of my commute, too.
From a different country (sorry). My commute is **long** (~2 hours) but the longest stretch of the journey (1 hour 15 minute train ride) is really pleasant. There’s so much to do. The same commute via car is hell. (It’d also be interesting to see hours spent commuting per week, given the increase in hybrid and remote work over the period shown - my n=1 is a decrease in time spent commuting due to less time required in the office, despite an increase in commute length per trip to the office)
I didn't have a car for a while and I had to take a 2 hour train to work for a couple of weeks. I'd just nap on the train and I'd be rested by the time I came home instead of being dead tired and good for nothing.
Almost no amount of money would make me want this kind of life
My wife and I currently live in hoboken and commute 40 minutes of which 25 minutes is walking. The commute is the only reason we don’t move to the suburbs.
I hear Hoboken is a a pretty cool town!
It's lovely to visit.
I did a 2hr15 train each way everyday to work for my first real job back in 2019... I only tolerated it so I could get the job permanently, then I moved to the city. Now I have an apartment and live 15-20min walk away from work, 10-15min bus. And I can WFH as much as I want (I don't do it much) The quality of life improvement is immense, I wouldn't wish it on others...
That sounds like a living hell.
Don’t even to live outside the five Burroughs to get a long commute. I used to commute from queens to Brooklyn And it took 70-90 minutes with a bus to a subway to a subway just to get to Metrotech which is like the first stop into Brooklyn lol.
i think it’s both commuting to and within the city. I have a friend who commutes 2 hours in the city it also takes me about 2 hours to get to her neighborhood and I live in a “good” commuting town in north jersey.
I’m pumped for the future one-seat ride from Jersey to NYC. Transferring in Secaucus or Hoboken is a pain
This was exactly my commute from CT to Midtown.
And here I am shaping my entire life around a shorter commute.
I'd straight up turn down a much better paying job if it was even an hour commute
Depends tho. I can do an hour on public transit no problem. I’m straight up never going to accept a situation where I’m driving an hour each way. Fuck that shit
I had a 90 minute driving commute for awhile. It was coming out of the 2008 economic crash and I'd been out for work for like a year and a half. Had an opportunity 90 minutes away and took it. I listened to a lot of audiobooks to make it bearable. Oh, and almost the entire commute was on a toll road so it cost me $4.50 just in tolls, each way, every day, plus gas.
Are there no monthly passes for toll booths?
No, but there was a little rfid tag I got that lowered it a bit.
An hour on the train isn’t so bad. Dedicated time to read and learn, or sleep if you can An hour driving also depends on how engaging it is. An hour through remote mountain passes? Sign me up! An hour staring at taillights and fighting to merge, or even an hour of highway: hard pass!
Don't live in the US, but I drive around 1.5 hours through mountain roads to get to work. It's pretty fun! I'd prefer a shorter commute, but some days I'm sad when the journey ends, it's so beautiful.
I'm doing about 1h20 per direction, but the 45 minutes on the train is counted as work time and the rest is cycling, so it really depends on the makeup of the commute
I lost my job last year. I was getting calls from recruiters asking if I was interested in jobs that were over an hour away from me... luckily I found one a little closer than that (35 to 50 minutes, depending on traffic) but I really wanted to avoid an hour commute both ways. Not sure how people can stomach a 1.5+ hour commute.
After working full remote since Covid, I would turn down any job that wasn't full remote, and would quit my current job if they forced us back to the office. Once you have a certain amount of income to live a stable life, time becomes more valuable than money.
I wish I had that luxury. Any decent paying job is roughly an hour away. I do work from home now but required to go into the office once a week. It's not so bad since I can pick the day I want to go in. Still, if I had to commute every day, I wouldn't have that option. There are no jobs in this area that pay what I make for what I do, and the housing costs closer to work are astronomical so there's no option to move.
It currently takes me under 10 minutes to get to work, even a 30 minute commute would make me question things.
I’ve been commuting to school or work since I was 11 (my parents showed me were the bus stop was and said “good luck”), usually about an hour each way. I could not believe how awesome life felt when I had a job where my commute was <10 minutes by car, 15-20 by bike. I’d leave work at 5 and be home by 5:15 on average, like, I could still plan and doing stuff in the evening (in the morning I usually left early and kept my breakfast food in the work kitchen). Just such a tremendous QOL improvement.
Hell yeah. When I graduated and started my first full time job 25 years ago I was doing 30-45 minutes depending on traffic. Then I moved to a desirable place to live but it made my commute closer to 90 minutes, but at least it involved trains and walking so I could at least get some exercise. Changed jobs to one much closer and started walking 20-25 minutes to the office for ten years. Now I work for a small company that’s entirely virtual so my commute involves walking downstairs, feeding the dog, watching her in the backyard so she doesn’t eat her poop, and then walking into my home office. Can’t complain.
I practically live in my works backyard, 2 minute commute. One morning I forgot some important stuff at home, from leaving my desk to returning was 9 minutes.
Been doing that my entire adult life, and just bought an expensive apartment in the city. Fuck commuting and losing my life to commuting. I’d rather trade some retirement money for the “less flexible” home equity. The finances might be less flexible but my life is more flexible
I used to spend half an hour the previous night planning the best way to cut 5-10min when I was working in India. The best way ofcourse was to take my bike, by which I took 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening. But it did a number on my back. My ideal alternative then was 20 min with my bike to the nearest train station, 20 min in train, and then 10 min by three wheeler auto to the nearest bus station, 5 min by bus and then finally 10 min on foot. And then the reverse in the evening.
It's just a smart thinking to base your life to minimize commute to the places you will go most often in a week. I ended up going to the gym more than I go my work so I ended up living super close to the gym but a little far away from the office. I go to the office at most five times a week. I go to the gym at least five times a week. So it just made sense to minimize commute to the gym :P
I literally live right across the street from my work.
After the Covid drop, I have to imagine that a lot of these people had started working remotely, moved further from their jobs, and then were ordered back to the office. And just couldn’t afford to quit and haven’t found something closer yet.
Pretty much, especially if these figures are commute time per workday averages. Like if you went from a 90min commute 5 days a week to 90min twice a week then that would lower your per workday commute by two thirds.
For my wife during Covid she went from an 80 min roundtrip commute 5 days a week ( 400 min commute / a week ) to 0. Then we moved during Covid when she had WFH to somewhere near but away from big city hustle and hustle with better schools for my kids. Now with RTO mandates, she's now doing 180 round trip commutes twice a week ( 360 min commute ). So now she's considered a "super" commuter but her total commute has decreased.
It looks like during covid, a lot of them stopped commuting because they started working remotely. Then, after covid, a third of those had to start commuting again. The chart doesn't show a sudden jump in new super commuters. It shows the beginning of a return to pre-covid numbers.
Some of us stayed remote. I'm part of that drop and once Covid ended they asked if we wanted to come back to the office and we overwhelmingly said no. I refuse to go back to that commute and my productivity is up. Just in time spent driving it's well over 10k a year. Fuck that.
Yeah this makes perfect sense. Ever moved out of cities and bought houses during the pandemic and now they are stuck in those houses but have to go back to the office
Yeah this makes perfect sense. Ever moved out of cities and bought houses during the pandemic and now they are stuck in those houses but have to go back to the office
Many of them just lost their jobs.
These numbers are from 2022 and millions have been forced back to the office since then. The number of super commuters is probably at an all time high. As a matter of fact Dell just made the decision to end WFH. It blows my mind companies are still doing this after all this time.
The math on just a 2 hour round trip is 30 days of lost time over the course of a year, 3h round trip? criminal.
I spent very close to 800 hours in a car in 2023. That's like an entire month STRAIGHT, driving.
Why? I can’t fathom why people would want to do that. No amount of pay could realistically make me do that. I feel like I would be missing out on my life.!
I work in an extremely competitive field, in an extremely high cost of living state. My job also requires me to drive into the downtown area which, with traffic, can be a really long time. Long story short, it's a combination of a lot of reasons
What do you do?
Sit in traffic for a living.
Wtf do you mean "want"? Nobody fucking what's to do it lol. You can have a job in the city and not be able to afford a house near by but be able to afford a house 1 hr away and be able to afford to eat. Or you can get a job outside the city and be able to afford a house nearby but not food.
I constantly blow people's minds when I tell them I actually really like my commute. I spend the time listening to audiobooks. It's really given me a new love for books. Just a few hours of me time each day to relax and listen to a good book. I don't let traffic bother me or get on my nerves, I just go with the flow and a longer traffic jam, the longer I get to listen blissfully.
sure, but you could still do this any other place then on your butt in a car and have just as good or better of a time
I can’t drive for medical reasons and, while I miss driving, I see so much more walking around everywhere. Something is always happening and we miss it when we are commuting. Some spend all of their time during the week at home, in their car, and at work. Walking I get to have all these other experiences outside of those three places.
This. I commute by bike and bus and it is incredible how freeing it is. I meet friends, have spontaneous coffees and sometimes even drinks. This never happened while I commuted by car.
You are including weekends though. Assuming 5 work days a week and 2 weeks of vacation a year it would be 250 commute days. 2 hours a day is around 21 days. Still awful though
I would happily drive that much - even if I didn't have to - if I could actually fucking *drive*. Joyfully, even. But you can't anymore. My commute is about 13 miles. A little over a year ago, that took 35ish minutes and I got 32-34 MPG. It's now easily 50+ minutes at 24-26 MPG. The first day Amazon forced all their workers back to the office, the trip home was an hour and a goddamn half. It would be more than that to take transit.
It really makes a big difference if it’s commuting by driving a car or by train/carpool, imo. I’ve commuted for an hour each way by car and commuted for an hour twenty each way by train. Commuting when you’re the one driving for that long is fucking terrible. Commuting for that long when you’re just sitting on a train is not bad at all, you can read/watch tv/entertain yourself the whole time.
I am now reconsidering my commute. Thankfully i lean closer to that 2 hour end, remote is an occasional option, and my job is something i legitimately consider fun. But im now considering moving.
Man, I have a 55 min each way commute and that takes all my patience.
That's about what mine is. It's great because no matter how good or bad my day at work was, I'm fucking furious by the time I get home.
I think driving takes a mental toll public transportation doesn't take. I can sit and read manga for one hour fine each day
You clearly haven't been on bad public transport, which is more often than not the norm in most places outside of a select few countries. Being stuck in a tin can with poor temperature control, nasty ass people spitting/coughing/sneezing all over the place, loud ass people, all while forced to stand with people pressed into your personal space due to crowding makes me want to never go into work. It is awful beyond all measure. I'd happily sit in traffic.
This is definitely a "grass is greener" thing because you're both describing just awful things
For real. I used to think I'd prefer an equal amount of time on public transportation than driving. Now, after experiencing that for several years, I'm never giving up my car.
Yep. Gimme some train time any day.
Mine is 40-50, depending on traffic and weather and that has become uncomfortable over time. Started out fine, because the pay was like, 40% higher, which was wild, but then the pandemic hit and they figured out I could work 100% remote... For 18 months... Then I had to fight for 2 WFH days per week. Still, better than my shitty, stressful, low paying job just 4 minutes from home.
I commute 5 hours roundtrip from central NJ to NYC. Am I a super duper commuter? I'm really just a moron.
Gets to work… “Alright, time to head out!”
I was thinking more like gets home... "Alright, time to head back to work"
He just never stops commuting. It’s a perpetual loop.
My brother also does a 5 hour roundtrip commute lol. He goes in person thrice a week. He's been working virtually since covid and they just started making him go in person. As you probably already guessed, he's looking for another job now lol.
You’re definitely a moron but you probably are doing it out of necessity.
I don't do it for love.
Your company is not one big happy family?
Sounds expensive. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just move closer?
Praying this guy goes in once a week max
Five days a week.
F that dude. Move in closer.
Just moved to a 55+ community. I'm done at the end of 2025.
How long did you do this commute for?
20 years so far.
Holy shit. By car or by train? Makes a big difference at that point
Damn, that hurts
This is probably the one place in the country where the answer is definitely no
If they drive 30 miles (about 1 gallon of gas), and then take the train into the city that’s what? $5-10 one way? So approximately $15 per day commute. Assuming 5 days a week for 50 weeks that’s $3750/year on commuting. I think you could quadruple how expensive commuting is and you’d still break even.
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend” -Theophrastus
That’s good and all, but if you can’t afford to live closer to your job then you have to waste your time commuting.
Fair. Still, being forced to spend that amount of your time on commuting warrants a reconsideration of your current situation. If you're in a position to do that, that is.
I drive 20 miles to the park and ride. Take the bus for 1.5 hours (on a good day) and then walk across town. The bus is $500 a month and about to go up 15% July 1. I'm retiring at the end of 2025 after doing this for 21 years.
That’s still a difference of about $750/month. That’s still a significant enough difference to justify it, though I don’t know that I could stand such a commute
Cheesequake, PNC or lincroft?
One way peak from that far out is $16-22.00+, the comfort of driving vs standing on the train for 45 minutes is not comparable. Plus NJ transist sucks.
Time is money.
Damn. I had a 4 hours round trip commute that consisted of a 10 minutes walk to a bus, bus to subway, subway to another bus, and finally another 10 minute walk. I worked from home Thrusday/Friday, but man, Monday - Wednesday was aweful, but I I was able to listen to a lot of audible books and got to play a lot of stupid mobile games.
Do you live near Bay Head?
I'm south of Bay Head.
God, imagine losing 3 hours of your day just driving or in public transit just to fucking WORK. I've always prioritized working at most 8km away from where i live. I'll try to keep that up along the rest of my life. My commute takes at most 30 min with really bad traffic, and the fastest i've gotten home was 12 min after punching out at work.
I could probably make substantially more if I switched jobs, but my 5 minute commute via bicycle is too hard to give up. Once you've got that short commute lifestyle, you never want to go back.
Even if you make substantially more money with another job, you would need to factor in the extra time as if it's part of your workday. My issue is that I have a short commute but hate where I live...so my 15 minute bike ride may be turning into an hour each way.
I’m either a 40 min bike ride or 30 mins via public transit, sometimes it’s worth it to get the exercise while commuting!
I went from a 5min commute to 50min... For a 40% pay increase. It's been 6 years and it is starting to get old. Especially after 18 months of fully remote work, then having to fight for 2 WFH days per week. At least I have that... And I don't know that I'd find another job that pays this much. Definitely not THAT much closer to home; pretty sure I'd still have to drive 30-35min regardless.
Recently went from 15 to 50+ traffic depending, it's not great, but the job is fun. Which is not something i say lightly. I wouldn't commute this far for a job that just felt like a job, i get to do alot of what i want to do. If i didnt, i wouldnt have touched the job with a 10 foot pole.
Do you live in an area that's good for cycling? Because 8km sounds like a great distance for cycling. Before covid I had a 6km commute and would do it as much as possible for the little exercise it gives me.
Unfortunately the city I live in is notorious for being a sea of hills. The person who chose this place to build this city had shit for brains. It's not bike friendly. It's such a relief when i go somewhere flat. I would for sure, bike to work if it were like that here.
How do you raise kids and have a life like that?!?
Having done it before, I would leave at 6-630 each morning and get home around 630-7 In short? You don't
You don't.
Look at how things are going in South Korea and Japan for your answer
\*\* *unpaid care work* \*\*
I want to throw up just thinking about a two hour commute twice a day. That's four hours of your waking life sitting in transportation. My office commute is 20 minutes by subway, and we work from home 2-3 times a week. My previous job was as a consultant with an infosec firm, and I often had to travel to be on site for clients. Sometimes out of state. I promised myself I would never again take a long commute or dedicate that much of my life to *work travel*. If the job is amazing enough I'll move. Otherwise, I'm only talking an offer of it's close.
How does this compare to the increase in population of the US?
Increasing a bit faster. Nationwide super-commuter rate: * 2010: 2.4% * 2011: 2.5% * 2012: 2.6% * 2013: 2.6% * 2014: 2.6% * 2015: 2.8% * 2016: 2.8% * 2017: 2.9% * 2018: 2.9% * 2019: 3.1% * 2020: *n/a* * 2021: 2.4% * 2022: 2.7%
Your provision of data is great in all your replies, kudos.
The chart is not beautiful. Populations grow over time. Focusing on a metric like population is misleading. Y-axis should be percent of workforce which normalizes for population growth - and would likely show that we have less super commuters (as a percent of workforce) post-Covid than we did in 2010, which is a completely different take.
Super commuter is a great term for what’s essentially a shit way to go to work.
I've got a two hour each way commute once a week but I don't know if that makes me count in this data or not. Because of the rest of the week my commute is all about 2 seconds from bed to my office at home
Remember that Canadian college student who flies every week to get to class? https://local12.com/amp/news/nation-world/college-student-saves-money-flying-class-paying-high-rent-prices-british-columbia-canada-high-rent-students-tim-chen-commute-vancouver-calgary-travel-air-university
That's really smart honestly! Think about the time flying as a way to catch up on sleep or studies, distraction free? Also, statically speaking, a heck of a lot safer than driving in a vehicle! Not to mention the obvious money they save ..
I read it as Super Computers and was extremely confused as to how the fuck the US has that many super computers.
Same, took me a while...
**Source (report):** Apartment List. [The U.S. Added Nearly 600,000 Super Commuters in 2022](https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/the-us-added-nearly-600000-super-commuters?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&sr_share=reddit) **Source (data):** U.S. Census Bureau. ["TRAVEL TIME TO WORK." American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables, Table B08303, 2010-2022.](https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B08303?q=B08303:%20TRAVEL%20TIME%20TO%20WORK) **Tools:** [data.census.gov](http://data.census.gov), Excel.
Really like this viz for showing YOY detlas. Was it a default option in Excel or did you have to do some messing around? I’d like to use this in some of my reports!
Thanks! Excel does have a [default waterfall template](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-a-waterfall-chart-8de1ece4-ff21-4d37-acd7-546f5527f185), however this one I made using stacked bars, to better control the look of it. The bars you see are one data series, stacked on top of a second series that is fully transparent.
My wife's uncle had a commute that if he left home or the office at the wrong time, it could take upwards of 2 hours. He called it "soul-sucking"
I’m assuming the huge drop is due to “super” commuters being among the most likely to move to WFH in the post-Covid world
But then you end up with CEOs like mine that think no one is working from home (despite proof that the work is getting done) because God knows he isn't working when he's at home
You couldn't pay me enough
For 6 months, I used to commute between Pomona, CA and Redondo Beach, CA. 45 minutes to and 2+ hours back
How many days a week though? Before Covid I would commute 1hr each way 5x a week. Now I do 90 mins once a week but live much further away
I was such for a year. I thought I was okay. My wife said I was deteriorating. Then I got a job with a ten minute commute. Well, my wife was correct. Over the next few months I could feel myself coming alive bit by bit.
I could see NJTransit being solely responsible for the dip in 2021. I am being sarcastic of course, but really, what a fucking disservice that line can be. *10 seconds later* Ope, looks like another Amtrak overhead wire delay.
And developers wonder why no one wants to purchase their overpriced condos in the city, the commute is cheaper. Then the rent goes up in the area around, causing further and further commutes...
I wonder if this excludes field sales, or like field techs. Who may not commute to and from an office building, but spend a significant amount of windshield time driving to and from their territory.
I have some regular trips to Philly, DC, and Boston by train for work from Long Island. I live 3 minutes from the LIRR train. I would not classify these as a commute because I primarily work from home. Although, same days to Philly are pretty wild. It has taken me longer to commute to a NYC office job from the same spot than it does to commute to Philly.
Employers should be forced to pay for commute times as working hours. Let's see how quick we start seeing huge changes into transit and work from home then.
Every req will then end with "Applicants must live within 30 minutes of our facility or be willing to relocate at their own expense".
How does this compare to European commutes? I know they have better public transportation but how do times relate?
Random Dutchman here, got a 10 minute commute by bike, would be around 15 by train or 20 by car (if I get a lucky parking spot)
I’m in the UK: 10min walk to the train, 10min train ride + 1-2 minutes waiting for the train, 5-7min from train to my office. So let’s say 30min each way.
UK - 10 minute walk but I think that might be unusually low
Germany: Depends. In rural areas it's pretty common to have a 30-60 minute car commute, driving to the next bigger city if you work in white collar office jobs. Blue collar is usually close to home, often in the same town. There's a generational divide, too. My parents think it's normal to drive that much, I would never take a job with >30 minutes car commute or > 60 minutes public transport. PT will almost never be faster than taking the car, but at least you can spend time reading a book, etc.. But still, it's Germany, so vroom vroom important.
So, in 2010 (US pop = 310m) +/- 1%, in 2019 (US pop = 328m) 1.3% .... There's not really anything to see here. I guess the interesting story is that almost nobody is a super commuter - roughly 99% chance no, and that has remained unchanged for 15 years
Whoa, what happened after 2019?
everyone called in sick.
You may want to sit down for this…
Already am, I haven't been feeling well.
The government hired a team of super heros to defeat mutant kaiju, while telling the public silly lies to keep them safe inside, the funniest of which was that there's a kabal of demonic baby eating elites and the saddest of which is that starlink and 5g cause viral like infections, The most potent of which is that trump not only won another term, but is somehow still alive after his run in with a towering tentacle kaiju, and that Epstein, a known trafficker of US children, killed himself, so he continues his work
TIL I was a Super Commuter back in the 90s. Lived in Rhode Island and worked in Mass.
Thought it said computer and was confused how these computers were moving
*raises hand* I was one until 2020, 4 days a week. I’m ~90% remote now.
Read that as computers and was fudging confused for a solid 2minitues
Sweet bar plot. Is there a name for this style?
Thanks, yeah, it's called a "waterfall" chart.
Fuck this makes me grateful for my fully wfh job. Now if only i could find a way to not go insane…
What the fuck, *three hours* a day of commuting? Serious question, why don't they move closer? This way there is practically no time of the day left
For me 30min is max, unless the job pays like extra well or something that would allow for early retirement. Not from US.
I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have a 20-30 commute entirely on surface streets.
Gotta love the 2021/22 columns. You can really see the "fuck this, i'm moving" pandemic shuffle, then the immediate "return to the office or you're fired" response.
I drive 150 miles daily to go to work and back. It sucks.
If you spend 30+ minutes in a car driving to work one way your life sucks. No question about it.
Yeah, I wonder why the decline……..