Here's how much commuting time we save when working from home

Jan 27, 2023

On average, 40% of the time savings went to extra work on primary or secondary jobs. Image: Unsplash/ Claudio Schwarz

Cevat Giray Aksoy

Research Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Jose Maria Barrero

Assistant Professor of Finance, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

Nicholas Bloom

Professor of Economics , Stanford University

Steven Davis

William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor of International Business and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution

Mathias Dolls

Deputy Director, Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys at Ifo Institute

Pablo Zarate

PhD student in Economics, Princeton University

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A bar chart showing daily time savings when working from home in minutes.

The average is 72 minutes of time savings per day. Image: Aksoy et al. (2023) and Global Survey of Working Arrangements

A graph showing time savings to indicated activity.

On average, 40% of commute time savings go to extra work on primary and secondary jobs. Image: Aksoy et al. (2023) and Global Survey of Working Arrangements

A graph showing daily commute time savings dependent on demographics.

Average daily commutes are about 10 minutes longer for highly educated workers. Image: Aksoy et al. (2023) and Global Survey of Working Arrangements

A graph showing how the time savings allocation varies with individual characteristics.

Living with children under 14 has large effects on the allocation of commute time savings. Image: Aksoy et al. (2023) and Global Survey of Working Arrangements

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