Today's New York Times has an article about how COVID has slashed commuting times. But has it? Here's long-term data from the American Time Use Survey:
Nothing much happened. Commuting time started to decline in 2017 and continued declining at the same rate during the pandemic. Which is odd, because ATUS confirms that, in fact, fewer people are on the road:
In 2017-19, the number of commuters was dead flat and commuting time dropped by 54 seconds per year. In 2019-22 the number of commuters fell by a sixth and commuting dropped by......
48 seconds per year.
This is a mystery. It's also suggestive that the share of in-office work has fallen by a sixth. That's a fair amount, but it doesn't really come close to explaining the implosion of occupied office space in cities, which seems to have dropped by nearly half. It's another mystery.
A few thoughts:
1) The time use survey seems to be based on people *who commute*. If I'm understanding that correctly, people who commuted in 2019 but didn't in 2022 don't count as zeros in that average, they drop out entirely. So that first chart wouldn't seem to capture people who work from home, because they are no longer people who commute.
2) Office space in cities are disproportionately likely to house workers who can work from home. You can't make sandwiches from home. You can't clean toilets at home. You can't manufacture cars from home. But you can be a keyboard jockey at home all day long. "Jobs" does not equal "office workers".
Those seem right.
If you commute using public transit, your commute time didnt shrink at all. It may have risen as service was reduced. As a hybrid worker taking public transit, I can say that the commute is just as long as before, the stations are much grungier, but there are more empty seats.
Plus, many people moved further out from jobs during the pandemic. That would negate benefits from emptier roads.
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Is it possible that if a person is now going into the office only 2 or 3 days a week, that their commuting time is unchanged? This survey seems to suggest that the commute time would be unchanged, even though they are going into the office much less.
this. my husband goes in one day a week, but his commute is the same length. so his total time commuting has fallen 80% but his commute time is the same.
The Census Time Use Survey instructs people who usually work from home to skip the questions related to commute time.
Another thing to consider is "edifice complex". Once a company starts building office space, every managerial fief builder puts in a request for their desired space based on their most optimistic projections. The projects tend to develop a momentum of their own as managers up and down the food chain hope to see their own reflected glory in whatever it is the architects have proposed.
The demand induced by these building projects also affects developers. They see the rising demand for office space in those corporate plans and start their own planning. Very soon, it's me too. As in a gold rush, everyone wants a piece of the action. Plans are drawn and filed. Construction companies are hired. Supplies and equipment are ordered. Loans are arranged. The whole thing becomes precarious.
This process usually starts during a period of rapid corporate growth, but when the industry or economy starts to slow, those projections start seeming unrealistic. This doesn't stop the projects, but it does lead to a glut of office space. We already had a glut of office space before COVID. The suburbs were full of older empty or low occupancy office buildings. Companies like Amazon started cutting back on their internal projections. They dodged a bullet when they dropped that Amazon HQ thing in NYC.