The average American has added about two minutes to their one-way commute since 2009, meaning a typical commuter now spends 20 more minutes a week commuting than they did a decade ago, which adds up to some 17 more hours over a year.
Looking back nearly 40 years ago to 1980, Americans now commute a total of nearly an hour more each week.
The increase is being driven largely by a growing share of workers with long commutes, as more people are forced to move further away from metropolitan areas in search of affordable housing. Also contributing are transit and infrastructure problems, with many metro areas having put off needed spending on roads, bridges and public transportation even as their populations went up.
As a counter to this though, a small but growing percentage of Americans are avoiding commuting by working from home.
Just over five percent of the country's workforce worked from home last year, and telecommuting recently passed public transportation as the third-most-common method of commuting in the U.S.
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