Interview • 17.09.2024Less commuting time by working from home?

Dr. Rüger, even before the coronavirus pandemic, it was assumed that working from home reduces commuting time. You investigated this connection using Australia as an example. Have the assumptions been confirmed?

Yes, our analysis of the “Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey” from 2002 to 2019 shows that working from home reduces weekly commuting time by an average of 14 per cent. This data reflects the situation before the pandemic. It shows that commuting time is already reduced in the first year after switching to working from home. And the longer you subsequently work from home, the greater the time savings.

Does the amount of time you spend working at home also play a role in the length of your commute?

Yes, a significant reduction in commuting time can only be seen if people spend at least 60 per cent of their total working hours working from home. If less time is spent working from home, the reduction in commuting time is significantly smaller, presumably because many employees in this case use home office to take work home with them in addition to a full working day in the office. Ultimately, no travelling time can be saved.

Are there differences between women and men?

The reduction in commuting time is greater for women than for men. While women's weekly commuting time is reduced by an average of 20 per cent when working from home, this figure is only 6 per cent for men. This is not only due to the fact that women work from home to a greater extent, but also because they save more commuting time with the same proportion of total working hours spent working from home. One explanation for this could be that, due to traditional gender roles, long journeys to work are more stressful for women and therefore the time saved by working from home is more important to them.

Have you also considered the period after 2019?

To get an idea of how much commuting time can be saved by working from home in the future, we combined our estimates with the results of recent surveys of Australian employees. They were asked about their preferences regarding the proportion of working from home after the end of the coronavirus pandemic. The results suggest that commuting times could fall by 17 to 25 per cent overall compared to 2019 if employees were able to fully implement their home office wishes in practice.
We also analysed the HILDA data for 2020 and 2021. The results show that the time saved in hybrid forms of work with a home office share of 40 to 59 per cent was greater during the pandemic than before. One explanation for this could be that less overtime was worked at home in the evenings or at weekends during the pandemic and entire office days were replaced by working from home instead.

For people who spent 60 per cent or more of their working time working from home, there was little change in commuting times between before and during the pandemic. This indicates that the home office and commuting behaviour of this group has hardly changed, although it has grown significantly in terms of numbers.

What future developments do you derive from your results?

For the period after the coronavirus pandemic, it can be assumed that time pressure in the workplace and the associated use of home office for overtime will increase again. However, it is also likely that people will work from home full-time more frequently than before the pandemic. Overall, we therefore assume that future commuting savings from working from home will be somewhere between those before the pandemic and those during the pandemic.

Your analysis is based on Australian data. What is the situation in Germany?

Unfortunately, there are no comparable studies on this question for Germany due to a lack of data. However, we assume that the results of our study can also be applied to Germany to a certain extent. Here, too, the pandemic has led to an increased use of home office, which is now an integral part of working life.