Time Trends in Workplace and Work Access: Atlanta MSA

With the New Year, it’s back to work (at least more often, and more often in the office) for many of us. And as an Atlanta commuter, over the last few years, you may feel a bit like a frog in a pot. Is it your imagination, or have are Atlanta commutes gradually getting worse again?

To answer this question, we turn to the American Community Survey 1-year estimates, courtesy of the Census Bureau.[1] Although the data may seem a bit dated at first glance, they are the most current available, and all the more recent (and preliminary) evidence shows that these data track (directionally) more current trends.

Figure 1 below presents data, since 2010, on the average commute to work (i.e., one way trip) for workers in the 29-county Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area.

As Figure 1 shows, the average commute to work shed about three minutes between 2019 and 2021 and has since recovered two of those minutes.[2] The current commute is very close to the trend line for this 14-year period.

What accounts for the increase in commute times? Readers of this blog may recall a previous posting attributing the drop in commute time, between 2019 and 2021, to increases in work from home (WFH). And there has been a lot of media attention to companies nationwide that are clawing back WFH policies in favor of “return to office (RTO).” Is a reversal of WFH (and the rise of RTO) solely to “blame””?

Figure 2 reveals trends in the top three commuting modes used in the Atlanta MSA since 2010: driving alone, carpooling, and working from home.

This graph above shows that WFH was not merely a pandemic-era innovation: it had been growing steadily, if slowly, over the course of the 2010s. By 2019, WFH was on the cusp of surpassing carpools as the main form of alternative commuting.[3] But it was the events of 2020 that kicked WFH into high gear. And though the share of WFH dropped 3.2 percentage points between 2021 and 2022 and another 1.9 points between 2022 and 2023, reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated:

WFH remains– as of the last 1-year survey– at a healthy level that’s more than twice its pre-pandemic incidence. By contrast, carpooling had been on a very slow and uneven decline over the 2010s. It dipped a bit in 2021, but has rebounded to its 2019 level. Driving alone in a single occupancy vehicle had held fairly steady over the 2010s. It dropped some during the pandemic, is back on the rise, but has not yet recovered to its pre-pandemic levels.

What of other forms of commuting? Because they are all much less frequent than driving alone, the scale of the previous graph would not support displaying them alongside the other commuting modes. We offer Figure 3 below to focus on the very bottom range of commute mode frequencies–and display trends in the use of public transportation, bicycling, walking, and other means[4] for commuting.

As Figure 3 above shows, bicycling and walking are both fairly infrequent commuting modes in Atlanta, and both have been basically flat over the 14-year period shown in the graph. The “other means” category seemed to have a slight rise during the 2010s,[5] a small dip during the pandemic, and then a slight rebound for 2023. But the big story is public transportation: after being flat (or perhaps slightly down) over the 2010s, the use of public transportation for commuting dropped almost 2/3 during the pandemic and has recovered to only a bit over half of its 2019 share of commutes. Though users of public transportation do not make up a large percentage of commuters,[6] the drop in its use no doubt has negative consequences both for the fiscal health of transit agencies as well as congestion on the roads.

Finally, the below Figure 4 shows change in the total number of workers ages 16 and over in the Atlanta MSA.

Figure 4 above highlights the growth of the region’s workforce over the last 14 years. The number of workers in the Atlanta MSA has increased from 2.37 million in 2010 to nearly 3.2 million by 2023, an increase of nearly 35% over the entire period–and an estimated increase of over 200,000 just in the last two years with pandemic recovery. Take this increase in the number of workers, add in a reduction in work from home, and mix in a decreased propensity to use public transportation, and you’ve got a recipe for “frog soup a la commuter”.

Wondering what the picture looks like for your county? We’ll delve into county-by county findings in the final post of this two-post series.

Notes:

[1] The Census Bureau has two main releases of data from the American Community Survey. The 1-year estimates typically come out in September and cover data gathered over the course of the previous year. The 5-year estimates generally drop in December, covering data gathered over the course of the preceding five years. The trade-off is currency of data vs. geographic granularity: 1-year data tables are available only for geographic units with 65,000 or greater population, while some 5-year data are available all the way down to the block group. Note that the American Community Survey suspended operations in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so the graphs presented in this post will lack data for that year.

[2] Two minutes may not seem like much, but consider that two minutes per trip, two trips per day, 25 workdays per month, and over the course of a year the average commuter spent 20 hours more in transit over the course of 2023 than in 2021. That represents roughly a 7% increase from 2021 to 2023.

[3] I.e. alternatives to the single-occupancy vehicle.

[4] The “other means” category includes modes such as taxis, motorcycles, scooters, and ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft.

[5] This rise may have resulted in part from increased options such as ridesharing and scooters.

[6] Note that many counties in the MSA have little in the way of public transportation. These numbers will be somewhat higher in the urban core served by MARTA.