Getting to Work — An Expensive Proposition

MyPerfectResume took a look at commute times in the U.S. and found the average worker in this country loses 223 hours each year stuck in an automobile on the way to work. Doing the math, it’s close to six unpaid 40-hour work weeks.

Adding to that math is the math of dollars and cents and if employees were paid for that time, the average U.S. worker would lose $8,158 a year.

The report is titled The Invisible Pay Cut. It tabulated data from the nation’s 50 largest metro areas to come up with the afore-mentioned figures. Jasmine Escalera is a career expert at MyPerfectResume. She said the purpose of the report is to point out the cost of employers pushing employees to return to the office full time.

• The report puts travel time as an unpaid part of the workday
• It contends travel time is a hidden-cost of a return-to-the-office mandate
• The report says it demonstrates how much time and money employees lost before COVID
• Long commutes in metro areas are an enormous time-loss for employees
• The report calls it a time tax

"Ultimately," the report points out, "the invisible pay helps us visualize an old truth: Time is money, and where we work affects both."

The report says workers in San Jose and San Francisco, California and New York City lose the most time value and the report puts their losses at somewhere around $12,000 a year.

New Yorkers have the longest commute averaging 36 minutes one-way.

"While commuting isn't a literal pay cut, it represents a real loss of time that could be spent working, resting, or living," Escalera said. "By quantifying commute time in terms of value, we expose how returning to the office reshapes the economics of work for millions of people.” Source link: PropertyCasualty360.com — https://bit.ly/4sda8Gk