A total of 3.7 million British workers travel for two hours or more every day to make their way to the office, recently released figures have revealed.
The figures have been collated by the Office for National Statistics and were published by the Trades Union Congress.
On average, the daily commute lasted 57.1 minutes in 2015, the statistics revealed.
Frances O’Grady of the Trades Union Congress explained the slowdown in wage growth combined with high house prices and rental costs were the main reasons for the longer commute.
“Employers cannot turn a blind eye to this problem. Long commutes eat into our family time and can be bad for our working lives too.”
Six years ago, in 2010, 2.8 million people took a journey time of two hours or more on them to get to work. Today, this number has increased quite significantly to 3.7 million, the ONS found.
According to the BBC, the results of the ONS survey were based on responses from 90,000 workers, not taking those into account who are working from home.
The results revealed:
- Men and those who work in finance or insurance are the most likely to make long journeys
- People who work in London have the longest journeys – 931,000 people spend at least two hours getting to the office and back
- Women are increasingly joining the commuter club – around 1.45 million female workers travel for two hours a day, a 35% increase since 2010
- The number of male commuters with journeys over two hours also rose 29% to 2.3 million
The TUC explained that workers were now less than ever likely to be able to afford to live near their places of work. Overall, the cost of renting a home in the UK grew faster than the cost of living in the year to September, following ONS figures.
During the same time, UK property prices saw an increase of 8.4% annually up to August.
