NJ's Commutes Are 3rd Longest In The Nation (But Getting Shorter)

NEW JERSEY — Nearly 1 million New Jerseyans worked from home last year. But state residents who had to put on real pants and commute to their jobs had some time-consuming travels.

The average New Jerseyan's trip to work took 28.6 minutes in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That's the third-highest mark in the nation, behind only New York (31.4 minutes) and Maryland (29.3 minutes).

The less-densely populated states had shorter commutes, with residents in South Dakota (17.4 minutes), North Dakota (17.5 minutes), Wyoming (18.3 minutes), Montana (19.1 minutes) and Nebraska (19.3) spending the least amount of time traveling to work each day.

Although New Jerseyans have longer trips, their journeys to work have gotten shorter. The state averaged a 33.1-minute commute in 2019, per census data.

New Jersey's at-home workforce also grew by 450 percent from 2019-21. Census officials estimated that 217,410 state residents — 4.9 percent of New Jersey's workforce — worked from home in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. Last year, 977,514 state residents — 22.1 percent of New Jersey's employed population — worked from home.

The average commute varied by county, with Sussex County spending the most time traveling to work last year (34.3 minutes per trip). Cape May County's workforce had the quickest trips (22.3 minutes). Meanwhile, Somerset County led the state with 31.4 percent of its employed population working from home. On the other end, only 9.3 percent in Cumberland County worked from home last year.

Census officials excluded at-home workers in their calculations of average commuting times.

The data comes from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which provides information on various aspects of American life. The agency releases data for odd-numbered years, so it's not clear how many New Jerseyans worked from home in 2020 — COVID-19's most disruptive year.

Normally, 290,000 people take the American Community Survey each month for a year. But the pandemic impacted the quality of data collection in 2020, so the Census Bureau provided estimates instead.

Here's the average travel time to work for each New Jersey county in 2021, plus the percentage of each county's employed population who worked from home:

• Atlantic County: 25.7 minutes, 11.4 percent working from home
• Bergen County: 28.9 minutes, 24.8 percent working from home
• Burlington County: 26.9 minutes, 19 percent working from home
• Camden County: 25.4 minutes, 19.4 percent working from home
• Cape May County: 22.3 minutes, 13.1 percent working from home
• Cumberland County: 24 minutes, 9.3 percent working from home
• Essex County: 31 minutes, 22.3 percent working from home
• Gloucester County: 26.5 minutes, 17.9 percent working from home
• Hudson County: 33.3 minutes, 28.8 percent working from home
• Hunterdon County: 31.8 minutes, 28.9 percent working from home
• Mercer County: 23.9 minutes, 28 percent working from home
• Middlesex County: 29.6 minutes, 23.6 percent working from home
• Monmouth County: 29.1 minutes, 25.1 percent working from home
• Morris County: 28.7 minutes, 30.1 percent working from home
• Ocean County: 28.8 minutes, 14.1 percent working from home
• Passaic County: 25.6 minutes, 14.6 percent working from home
• Salem County: 26.6 minutes, 14 percent working from home
• Somerset County: 28.8 minutes, 31.4 percent working from home
• Sussex County: 34.3 minutes, 16.6 percent working from home
• Union County: 29 minutes, 18.3 percent working from home
• Warren County: 33.3 minutes, 15.6 percent working from home

This is how much New Jersey's trips to work changed from 2019-21, according to census data:

• workers 16 years and older: 4,421,054 people in 2019, 4,414,552 in 2021
• car, truck or van (drove alone): 3,137,002 people in 2019 (71 percent of workers), 2,642,467 in 2021 (59.9 percent)
• car, truck or van (carpooled): 348,602 in 2019 (7.9 percent), 315,490 in 2021 (7.1 percent)
• public transportation (except taxicab): 510,746 in 2019 (11.6 percent), 259,156 in 2021 (5.9 percent)
• walked: 118,774 in 2019 (2.7 percent), 105,042 in 2021 (2.4 percent)
• other means: 88,520 in 2019 (2 percent), 114,883 in 2021 (2.6 percent)
• worked from home: 217,410 in 2019 (4.9 percent), 977,514 in 2021 (22.1 percent)