Recently, we looked at how commute times had changed across the 50 largest cities in the U.S. since the workforce distribution has become more hybrid than remote. In doing so, we found that, nationwide, the expected correlation between remote work and commute trends was not as strong or as consistent as it was in 2020 and 2021.
Now, we turn to the same American communities survey data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau (see the methodology section below for more details), but focus our analysis on the largest cities in the Southern U.S. region to see how commute times have fluctuated across the American South in recent years, as well as what trends the distribution between remote and non-remote workers followed during that same time.
Southern U.S. Commute Times Tick Up Year-over-Year
Across the 42 Southern U.S. cities included in our analysis, the mean one-way commute in 2023 was 25 minutes — a slight uptick from the reported travel time to work of 24.7 minutes in 2022. Although a small increment on its own, this adds up to roughly two more hours spent traveling between home and work by one Southern U.S. worker commuting in 2023 as compared to the year before.
However, there were some cities that saw slight decreases in reported commute times during that same 12-month span. For instance, one-way travel times reported by Winston-Salem, N.C., commuters marked the largest difference among cities in the region — slightly more than three minutes shorter compared to the year before, which added up to 26 hours saved in both-way commutes per person in a year.
The next-best city on this list was not far behind: Miami commuters reported one-way travel times that were 2.9 minutes shorter than the year before. And, across the Florida city’s non-remote workforce, that added up to roughly 24 hours less spent on the road in one year for a person traveling between home and work.
Next, Orlando, Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., each saw one-way reported commute times dip by roughly 1.5 minutes compared to the previous year. This translated to a worker saving an estimated 13 hours of travel between work and home throughout those 12 months.
Among the 15 Southern U.S. locations to see a negative year-over-year difference in reported commute times, Arlington, Va.; Atlanta; and Durham, N.C., were the only other cities where travel times slipped by one minute or more in 12 months.
Not to be outdone, El Paso, Texas, and Lexington-Fayette, Ky., closed out the list, each with a dip of 0.2 minutes in their mean commute times. Zooming out to the total time saved by commuters here during the course of 12 months, that dip added up to two fewer hours spent traveling between home and the workplace.
Garland, Texas; Cape Coral, Fla.; & Washington, D.C. Report Longest Commute Times in Southern U.S.
In total, there were 18 cities where commute times exceeded the Southern U.S. regional mean reported travel time of 25 minutes. According to U.S. Census survey data, Garland, Texas, topped the list of longest commute times in the Southern U.S. region. Clocking in at 31 minutes each way, it was nearly 25% above the national mean travel time of 25 minutes. As such, the round-trip commute for non-remote workers here added up to a little more than an hour.
Next, Cape Coral, Fla., followed closely in second place. The mean one-way commute time reported here was 30.6 minutes — the second-longest among Southern U.S. cities encompassed in our analysis.
Washington, D.C. commuters faced the third-longest commute time — a mean of 30.4 minutes of one-way travel between home and the workplace.
Next, with an even reported travel time of 30 minutes one way, Frisco, Texas, had the fourth-longest commute in the region and was the last one on the list in which commuters spent half an hour or more commuting each way.
In fifth place was St. Petersburg, Fla., where the mean commuter-reported time in 2023 was 29.5 minutes to travel one way between home and the workplace.
Remote Work in Southern U.S. Slips Further From 2021 Apex
In 2021, workers operating at least partially remotely made up 21.3% of the workforce across the 42 Southern U.S. cities included in our analysis. One year later, that segment had slipped to 18.2% (a 3.1 percentage-point drop). Then, in 2023, it slipped another 1.5 percentage points to make up 16.7% of the workforce in the region.
Despite the continuing downward trend, the share of workers benefiting from increased workplace flexibility was still significantly up from the pre-pandemic share of 6% out of the total regional workforce.
Looking at decreases in remote work at a city level, Arlington, Va., saw the largest year-over-year percentage-point drop among Southern U.S. cities. Specifically, the share of remote workers here fell 7.2 percentage points from 35.8% in 2022 to 28.6% in 2023.
Nearby, Washington, D.C. had the second-sharpest drop in this respect: The share of remote workers in the capital decreased 6.5 percentage points from 2022 (33.8% out of the total local workforce) to 2023 (27.3%).
During that same time, Frisco, Texas, went from 39.7% to a 34.2% share of the workforce being at least partly remote. Yet, even though this marked the third-largest decrease among the Southern U.S. cities we analyzed (down 5.5 percentage points), Frisco still had the region’s largest remote segment out of its local workforce.
Meanwhile, nine of the 42 Southern U.S. cities we analyzed saw increases in their shares of employees working either fully remote or in a hybrid arrangement. Among them, data showed that the largest growth was in Cape Coral, Fla., where remote workers went from 13.2% of local employment in 2022 to 16.5% in 2023 — a 3.3 percentage-point increase year-over-year.
Notably, Norfolk, Va., followed at some distance in second place. Here, the share of remote workers grew 1.7 percentage points year-over-year to go from 7.2% in 2022 to 8.9% in 2023.
Finally, New Orleans, La., and Tampa, Fla. — the two larger urban centers among the top five Southern U.S. cities for the increase in the share of remote workers — saw similar proportional shifts in their respective workforce balance. The share of remote workers increased by 1.6 percentage points in each of these cities from 2022 through 2023.
Methodology
For this article, we turned to data on average U.S. commute times gathered by the latest U.S. Census American Community Survey. Specifically, we looked at travel times to work and the remote versus non-remote distribution of the workforce.
For both commuting and workplace characteristics, we analyzed data for the 100 most populous cities in the U.S. from 2019 through 2023. Of these 100, 42 were located in the Southern U.S. region. Estimates for 2020 were not included in the data we analyzed mainly due to challenges faced by the Census Bureau when collecting ACS data during that year.
Commute Time
The reported travel time to work refers to all modes of transportation, such as time spent by non-remote workers picking up passengers in carpools, navigating public transportation and any other activities related to getting to work. The commute time in minutes refers to time spent traveling one way between home and work.
Our calculations of hours spent in traffic were for commuting both ways (Census data multiplied by two), then by multiplying the minutes by working days (an average of 250 days, for reference) and dividing the result by 60 (minutes in an hour).
The numbers presented in this article refer to the 42 largest cities in the Southern U.S. region.
Workforce Distribution
For estimates on remote versus non-remote workforce distribution, we analyzed work-from-home percentages out of total workers as listed in the Census report and calculated the difference from one year to the next as a percentage-point change.
The number of workers who work outside of a centralized workplace was calculated using the WFH percentage and the number of total workers per the Census data.
Information presented in this article refers to the 42 largest cities in the Southern U.S. region.
