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Super Commuting is on the rise in the US

Despite a substantial amount of evidence that proves hybrid work benefits both employees and employers, and employees who work in a hybrid capacity are just as productive as those who work in-office full time, it looks as though the halcyon days of hybrid work could soon be a thing of the past.

And the opportunities remote work afforded during the pandemic years—no commuting, more time to juggle childcare and caregiving responsibilities and the freedom to move out of expensive big cities—are diminishing at a rapid rate.

From Dell’s decree that workers who choose to work remotely will not be eligible for promotions going forward, to Amazon rowing back its remote working policy with a strict RTO (return to office) mandate, more workers are being pushed back to the office five days per week.

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In fact, a recent study conducted by Stanford has found that post-pandemic there has been a surge in long-distance commuting, with the amount of people traveling 75 miles or more per day rising by 32 percent.

Super commuting isn’t a new phenomenon—the United States Census Bureau has found that extreme commuting has been on the rise since 1990.

However, this study looked at the top 10 urban commuting routes in the U.S. and compared the last four months pre-pandemic (November 2019 – February 2020) to the same four months post-pandemic (November 2023 - February 2024).

The study found that this increased figure of super commuters are typically spending over two hours driving to their destination and over two hours driving home again.

This means the average super commuter spends five hours of their day commuting from home to the office, and commuters start the return leg of their journeys from 3pm up until 10pm, with 5pm to 6pm being the busiest hours.

The study also established that Washington D.C. had the largest increase in super commuters at 100%, with New York coming in second with 89% of commuters falling into the super commuter category.

In Phoenix this figure was 57%, in LA, this figure was 20 percent, in Dallas it was 29 percent, and Philadelphia saw a 28 percent increase.

However, Chicago was the one outlier in the study as it has experienced a four percent reduction in super commuters.

Long-term impact

While spending more money on gas and wasting hours of your life sitting in traffic are the two most obvious downsides to super commuting, it’s arguably achievable if you only have to do it two or three days per week instead of five.

Similarly, juggling school drop offs and collections isn't feasible if you’re leaving the house at 6am to get to the office on time.

The other side of the super commuting coin is that forcing workers who have vast distances to travel back to the office full time is likely to lead to increased attrition rates, and not facilitating remote workers could result in companies losing out on the best talent because of location limitations.

Just look at Starbucks’ new CEO, Brian Niccol as the perfect—albeit extreme—example of this.

Prior to accepting his new role, Niccol secured special permission to live at his current home in Newport Beach and commute 995 miles to Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle (using the company's jet), in line with the company’s three-day return to office policy.

“You need to figure out where you need to be to get your job done, then do that. We’re all adults here,” he said. “This is not a game of tracking. This is a game of winning. I care about seeing everybody succeed, and if success requires us being together more often than not, let’s be together more often.”

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