While there are tons of advantages of living in Southern California (the weather, the food, the entertainment), there are some drawbacks - namely our jam-packed freeways and long commutes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average American spent about 4.5 hours per week on their commute in 2018. However, thanks to a sharp increase in the number of people working from home amid the coronavirus outbreak, a new study has found that Californians have gained back about 11.6% of their workweek by working from home and avoiding their commutes.
According to the study from CoPilot, before the COVID-19 outbreak, most workers in California spent about 5 hours commuting to their job every week with the average resident in Los Angeles spending about 43.6 hours working and commuting to their job every week. Post-COVID-19 and the shift to remote work has seen that number cut by 12.4%, or 5.4 hours per week.
Residents in larger cities on coastal states, including New York, California, and Maryland saw that biggest gains by eliminating their commutes, while residents in smaller and central states such as Wyoming, North and South Dakota have seen smaller increases.
Nationwide, newly-remote workers have gained an average of 10.4 percent of their work week back, the study found.
To find out how much time people were saving on their commute, CoPilot analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and calculated the percentage of the average work week people spent commuting to and from work prior to the pandemic in their area.
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