The Fact
A 2023 study using data from 27 countries found that people working from home saved an average of 72 minutes per work-from-home day in commuting time. Workers allocated about 40% of that saved time to their jobs and about 11% to caregiving.
What This Means
Working from home returns commuting time to the worker, but the returned time does not automatically become leisure. In this study, the largest single share of the time savings went back into paid work.
Sources
- Aksoy, Cevat Giray, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls, and Pablo Zarate. “Time Savings When Working from Home.” NBER Working Paper No. 30866, January 2023. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30866