That person in the next travel lane may be a ‘supercommuter’

Nearly 83,000 workers in the Washington region qualify as “super-commuters” – spending at least 90 minutes each way to and from their jobs.

They are part of a cadre of 3.7 million super-commuters nationally, according to the most recent (2022) figures from the U.S. Census Bureau as analyzed by Apartment List.

That 3.7 million figure is up about 600,000 from the year before, when many workers were doing their jobs from home owing to COVID.

“A record number [of employees] continue working from home; however, many employers appear to be shifting back to in-person or hybrid arrangements,” Apartment List analysts noted. “This is putting more commuters on roadways and transitways daily – including more super-commuters – and resuming the pre-pandemic trend.”

The Washington region’s 82,578 super-commuters in the 2022 figures represent 3 percent of all those going to work, slightly higher than the national rate of 2.7 percent.

The figures are less for the inner suburbs – in Arlington, the rate was 2 percent and in Fairfax County it was 1 percent. But in the outer suburbs, rates increase significantly; in Charles County, Md., it approaches 10 percent.

Many super-commuters use public transit to get where they are going. Those in the super-commuter ranks tend to be higher-income-earners who work in a central city but live in more bucolic surroundings.

To perhaps no one’s surprise, the Southern California area is the nation’s hotbed of super-commuting, with approximately 300,000 people making the slog. In fact, the highest rate nationally was clocked in by residents of Palmdale, Calif. (located about an hour from Los Angeles), where 17 percent of employees were super-commuters.

For the full report, see the Website at https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/the-us-added-nearly-600000-super-commuters.