Time is money! How remote work saves the average New York City worker 331 hours a year, while South Dakota staff gain back just 145 hours by forgoing their daily commute
- Research shows how working from home saves time in different parts of the US
- Unsurprisingly, New Yorkers save the most, while those in the Midwest save the least
- Images show how the pandemic has had vastly different impacts across the country
Home workers in New York City save a whopping 331 hours a year by staying home — the equivalent of two weeks — according to new research.
There has been a massive shift to working from home since the pandemic, but this has had dramatically different effects on people’s lives depending on where they live.
For example, workers in Indianapolis save just 196 hours a year by staying home, about 40 percent less than their New York City colleagues.
In total, the Big Apple’s remote workforce saves a staggering 295,632,078 commuting hours per year – the most of any U.S. city.
Career website cv.io used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to find the average commute length in each U.S. city and state and doubled it to account for round-trip travel.
The average number of hours spent commuting in each U.S. city comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was doubled to account for round-trip travel, then multiplied by the average number of days worked in a year – 250 – to calculate hours saved by working from home
The same calculation was made by state, with New Yorkers saving the most time on average
The average hours saved per year by working from home were then multiplied by the number of home workers in each city to find out how the trend actually played out
The same calculation was made by the state, with Californians generally saving the most time
It then multiplied this number by the average number of workdays in a year — 250 — to find out how much time an employee in major cities or each state would save, on average, if they saved working from home all year.
To find out how this worked out in reality, the company also multiplied this by the number of remote workers in cities or states.
New York City workers may be more motivated than most to work from home for financial reasons, including the cost of buying lunch.
Nearly half of New Yorkers planned to work remotely more often starting in April 2022, saving them about half of the average $12,561 they usually spend working in the city, according to Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom.
New York City is also the most stressful city to work in, according to a recent survey by Resume.io.
In terms of US states, New Yorkers save an average of 261 hours a year not commuting to work, the most in the country, while those in South Dakota save the least, at 145 hours a year.
In general, workers in the Midwest and Centralwest would save less time than others by working from home.
This is because these states have some of the lowest population densities, meaning commuting is an easier operation, cv.io suggests.