The pandemic has ended America’s daily commute to work



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  • Many Americans have quit commuting daily amid blockages and working from home over the past year.
  • The average time spent traveling each day has increased from around an hour and 12 minutes in 2019 to 47 minutes in 2020.
  • Only about two-thirds of Americans traveled anywhere on an average day in 2020, up from 84% in 2019.

The daily grind is over.

It’s one of the smaller, but potentially surprisingly pleasant, changes from the horrific last year of the pandemic and lockdown: taking the subway or driving a car to get to work ended for millions of people. ‘Americans.

Results recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from the American Time Use Survey showed that the average time Americans spent traveling on any given day fell from about an hour and 12 minutes in 2019 to 47 minutes in 2020. .

Even more dramatic, while 84% of Americans traveled somewhere outside of their home on a typical day in 2019, only 67% did so in 2020. These statistics include commuting, commuting, and commuting. but also the time spent going to stores, taking the children to school or any other trip. to or from home.

The Time Use Survey asks thousands of Americans each year to keep diaries, listing how they spend their time on a typical day. Due to the disruption caused by the onset of the pandemic last spring, the BLS released estimates comparing the months of May through December 2019 to the same months in 2020.

A consequence of this is that all of the 2020 numbers reflect the period after COVID-19 started to spread widely and lockdowns were put in place across the country.

The Time Use Survey also showed that the share of Americans working from home nearly doubled, from 22% in 2019 to 42% in 2020. This varied across industries, sectors like finance and services. professionals with much higher teleworking rates than transport or leisure and hospitality. :

Other data also shows a sharp drop in commuting during the pandemic. A traffic congestion study conducted by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute found that the number of hours commuters spend in traffic congestion each year has been cut by almost half, from 54 hours per commuter in 2019 to 27 hours in 2020. .

Zillow analysis reported by the Wall Street Journal found that homebuyers pay much less to live near work, as remote work situations make commute time less of a factor in choosing where or live.

Nicole Freedman of the Journal wrote: “Over the two-year period ended May 2021, home values ​​in neighborhoods with a 70-minute commute rose 30.2%, far exceeding a price increase of 9. , 2% for 20 minute travel zones and lower prices. 2.5% for neighborhoods less than 10 minutes from an employment center “in the Boston metropolitan area.

We’ll see what happens as the economy continues to reopen, but for now at least, many Americans are saving time on one of the most frustrating parts of the workday.

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