Today Testing Finds Working from Home Saves Money, Time

Working from home offers a ton of benefits. No commute, no office politics and no need to get dressed for work. But what’s often overlooked is that working from home also gives employees extra free time.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show full-time workers who work from home spend about 28 percent less time each day working than those who go into the office and, they don’t have to spend time driving to and from the office each day.

That got Today Testing – a company with extensive experience in blog management, software review and social media marketing – wondering how much extra free time working from home gives a worker each year. After running the number, the results were shocking: On average, full-time employees who work from home will have 777 hours, 46 minutes, and nine seconds of extra free time each year compared to their office-bound counterparts.

That’s the equivalent of more than 32 days of extra time that remote workers get to enjoy however they want.

Here is what Today Testing found:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent American Time Use Survey, full-time employed individuals who work from home put in an average of 5.88 hours per day. On the other hand, full-time employed individuals who go into an office work an average of 8.18 hours per day.

This means people who work from the home average two hours and 18 minutes less each day than those who commute to an office. That’s a difference of 11.5 hours each week.

Obviously, not everyone works a full eight hours when they’re at the office, but the point is they spend that time away from home and are in the office.

On top of that, the American Community Survey Report from the U.S. Census Bureau found the average commute for U.S. workers is now 27.6 minutes each way or 55.2 minutes round trip each day. People working from home don’t have to commute, so they save all that time by not sitting in traffic or on the train.

When you add it all up, full-time workers who are remote and work from home get an extra 16.1 hours of free time each week, or 777 hours, 46 minutes, and nine seconds over the course of a year.

If you stretched that out over a 45-year career, someone who worked from home would get an extra 1,458 days or roughly four years of extra free time compared to someone working in an office their whole career.

With such data, it’s no wonder 87 percent of Gen Z workers say they want to work remotely and view it as a top perk.

Where do workers stand to save the most time working remotely? Here are the top 20 metro areas where workers lose the most time by working in an office.