A quarter of a million long commutes disappeared during the pandemic in the Seattle area

We all know the rise in teleworking during the pandemic. With more people working from home or some other remote location, commuters simply no longer exist – at least for now.

But which ways to work have been switched to home office and which have not?

Some new data shows that in the greater Seattle area, not all commuters were affected equally. The number of workers with longer commutes – those who took 20 minutes or more each way – fell sharply. But the number of people with short commutes has actually increased somewhat.

More about the COVID-19 pandemic

The data from the market research giant Nielsen is based on surveys. It shows a huge surge in non-commuters in the field, as one would expect in this era of remote work.

The number of people who don’t normally commute has increased two and a half times since the pandemic began. From February 2020 to February 2021, approximately 318,000 workers age 21 and older in the greater Seattle area did not typically commute. In the same period a year earlier – before the pandemic broke out – only 125,000 workers did not normally commute.

That translates into 193,000 fewer commuters because of remote work alone. In addition, the number of people who were inactive for whatever reason in our area has increased by 74,000. There could be a number of factors behind this surge, but it is likely that much of it was due to people losing their jobs as a result of the pandemic.

Show subtitles

Taken together, that is an increase of 267,000 adults in the Seattle area who have either not commuted or have not worked since the pandemic began.

While that’s a very large number, it’s really not surprising. We have all seen or witnessed firsthand these changes in the way we work and commute.

But the Nielsen data offers some additional insights into the impact of the pandemic on commuters in our area that may be less expected. It shows that 100% of the net decrease in commuting is due to people commuting for 20 minutes or more.

Overall, the number of workers in the Seattle area commuting 20 minutes or more each way has fallen from more than a million to around 810,000 since the pandemic began. This corresponds to a decrease of almost a quarter of a million (246,000) with moderate to very long commutes.

By far the largest decrease was recorded for commuters between 30 and 59 minutes. These fell by around 34%. Slightly shorter commutes (20 to 29 minutes) and so-called mega-commutes (an hour or more each way) also decreased, but not quite as dramatically.

On the other hand, the number of people who commute for less than 20 minutes has even increased somewhat. Almost all of the increase was seen in those with the shortest commute times – those who take less than 10 minutes.

While the data shows this large gap between the impact of the pandemic on people who travel longer versus those who travel shorter, it does not explain why. And the reason for this trend wasn’t immediately apparent – at least to me. So I took a closer look at the Nielsen commuter demographics to find some clues.

One jumped out.

There is some relationship between commuting time and job status. The data shows that people with shorter commutes, on average, are more likely to have jobs that could be categorized as ‘workers’ – and this was often seen as important during the pandemic (e.g. retail).

These jobs tend not to have remote working facilities, which could explain why their numbers haven’t declined during the pandemic. Longer commute is more of an employee and can be converted into remote work.

The data shows that approximately half (49%) of employees in the Seattle area with a job categorized as manual worker had a commute time of less than 20 minutes. In comparison, only about 37% of employees had a commute time of less than 20 minutes.

According to the data, people who are white-collar workers in the Seattle area were at least twice as likely to work remotely as those who were blue-collar workers.

And there is a corresponding income gap: remote workers had an average household income of about $ 35,000 higher than those who commute for less than 20 minutes.

There’s one more thing the data doesn’t explain that you might be wondering: With a quarter of a million fewer daily commuters in our area, why is traffic still so bad?

Nielsen surveyed nearly 3,000 adults 21 and older in the greater Seattle area, which includes King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, both before and during the pandemic. The estimated population aged 21 and over was just over 3 million.