People Have Better Things to Do Than Commute, Study Finds

People spend the time they used to commute doing more wholesome and fulfilling activities like exercising, spending time with family, and generally anything other than working, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found.

Chief among those better activities is sleeping. According to the study, all age groups sleep about an hour more, on average, than they did when commuting. Younger workers tend to spend more time at bars or exercising. Older workers prefer to use the extra time for child care and meal preparation.

The authors note that the study, “lead confidence to the various reports on employees’ preferences for flexible work arrangements.” Typically, the narrative around working from home is employees prefer it so they can work in more comfort or not actually work or “quiet quit.” But the Federal Reserve’s study indicates there are actual reasons for wanting to work from home tied to the absence of a commute, which have gotten progressively longer in the U.S. for the last several decades. Prior to the pandemic, the average U.S. worker spent an hour a day commuting, according to the Census Bureau. A tenth of U.S. workers spent more than two hours a day commuting. For those who now work from home, that is found time that makes their lives richer and more fulfilling. The time people used to spend commuting is no longer wasted in the purgatory of American highways where time sinks into oblivion and one is left only to contemplate their own fleeting mortality amongst a blacktop of motorized sadness.

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