If you're like many San Diegans who were able to work remotely during the pandemic, you probably saw your bank balance swell during the pandemic. In fact, according to the Fed, “U.S. households accumulated about $2.3 trillion in savings in 2020 and through the summer of 2021.”
Your savings account was the beneficiary of many things: Less pain at the pump (both in the amount of gas burned and the price per gallon), no power lunches to pay for, learning how to cook instead of ordering takeout, etc.
Then, in 2021, the phrase "return to office" began to creep into the vernacular, supplemented by "WFH," the abbreviation that many of those who were working from home preferred to see. Soon, the terms were joined by a not-so-distant cousin, "hybrid."
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While corporate debate began in earnest, "hybrid" crept into the winner's circle, or so it seems on the freeways on Mondays and Fridays.
People began to wonder, of course, how much it cost them to RTO, especially with consumer savings levels dipping. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that over "the past two years, consumers have drawn down the more than $2 trillion in extra savings they accumulated during the pandemic."
In an interesting twist in the debate, the national Chamber of Commerce deployed a mini-army of statisticians and came up with a list of Cities with the Cosliest Commutes.
Want to know how much you might have banked if you WFH instead of RTO? That is, if you worked that commute time and instead of commuted with it in congestion traffic.
Bonus points for the COC for breaking it down city by city. Here's how it works: The stats majors started with the median earnings for full-time workers in a particular city. In San Diego, that's $66,536.00. Then they divided that by 52 weeks, and then by 40 hours. That gets you to an average hourly wage for a San Diegan of just shy of $32 an hour. Then, they determined the average round-trip commute time. Here in America's Finest City, that's a hair under 45 minutes.
So, stay with us: $32 x 0.75=$24.
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Now, let's say you're on the I-5 commute with your fellow North County residents five times a week or are doing the 15 to 54 shuffle down in South Bay every weekday. Each year, instead of living in your Lexus five days a week, 52 weeks a year, you could be pretending to work — or, in some cases, actually grinding — at home and banking a cool $6,210.03.
For the record: We don't love the math on this part. You would be taking at least two weeks vacation, and — what? — at least five sick days. Let's call it $24 x 5 x 49 = $5,880.
However you chop it up, that's still a lot of cheese for looking at your 'Gram and messing around with a few spreadsheets.
So how does San Diego stack up? Well using the COC's math, San Francisco residents would be making the most in the U.S. by WFH during their commute times: A cool $12,650.66. The math is not so sweet for city dwellers in Jackson, Mississippi, the lowest city (No. 170) on the COC list: $2,535.04 a year.
Elsewhere in the county, it's a similar story to San Diego's:
- Oceanside: $6,883.78
- Chula Vista: $6,244.91
- Escondido: $5,963.45
So, will this be a persuasive argument with HR or your boss? We don't think so, but all that cheese left on the table might be food for thought (apologies for the mixed metaphor) next time you consider a career move.
