For millions of Americans, the daily commute has become a defining factor in the ongoing tug-of-war between remote work and the return to the office. As businesses ramp up efforts to lure employees back—whether full-time or on a hybrid schedule—the Willie Nelson classic “On the Road Again” could easily become the anthem of this new era. Yet, despite the promise of gourmet food courts, state-of-the-art fitness centers, private outdoor terraces, ergonomic seating, and vibrant city centers, it’s the time spent getting to and from work that weighs most heavily on employees’ minds.

According to MSCI data from 2023, commute time has emerged as perhaps the most significant influence on whether workers are willing to return to the office. Yardi Kube, which compiled recent data on commuting trends, found that the national average commute now stands at 26.8 minutes. That’s a modest 48-second improvement, or about 3%, from the 27.6-minute average recorded in 2019, a time when remote and hybrid work were still rare. Back then, only nine million of the nation’s 157 million workers worked remotely.

The story of commuting in America is one of peaks and valleys. The 2019 average was the highest since at least 2010, but when the pandemic hit, commute times plummeted to 25.6 minutes in 2021, mirroring levels last seen in 2011. By 2022, the average had bounced back to 26.4 minutes, matching the 2015 figure. The climb from 2021 to 2023, an increase of 1.2 minutes, happened in just two years — a pace that previously took five years before the pandemic.