Which European countries have the longest and shortest commutes?

COVID-19 has greatly impacted working life, with many people starting to work remotely during the pandemic.

Companies have since been examining the advantages and drawbacks of working from home. Many have started offering remote work options at least part of the week. 

However, some employers are calling staff back to the office full-time. Most recently, Amazon ended its hybrid work policy, requiring employees to return to the office five days a week. The vast majority of employed people in the EU still commute.

According to Eurostat, only 13.5 per cent of employed individuals in the EU worked from home in 2021.

How much time do European employees spend commuting? This varies significantly across European countries, according to the last available data collected pre-pandemic in 2019 by the EU’s statistics office, Eurostat.

Since we are not interested in the proportion of employees working in offices, but rather in commute time, it is still helpful to map the trends across Europe.

In the EU, consisting of 27 member states, the average one-way commuting time for employed people aged 15-74 years was 25 minutes in 2019.

Latvia had the longest average commute at 33 minutes, followed by Hungary and Luxembourg, both at 29 minutes.

On the contrary, Cyprus had the shortest average commute time at 19 minutes. Greece (20 minutes), and Italy and Portugal (both 21 minutes) closely followed Cyprus. 

The majority of EU member states (17 countries) had commute times ranging between 24 and 28 minutes.

When EFTA, the UK, and some candidate countries are included, Iceland stands out as an outlier with the shortest average commute time of just 15 minutes.

Some Southern European countries tend to have shorter average commuting times while many central and Western European countries, such as Germany, France, and Switzerland, have commuting times around 25-27 minutes, which is close to the EU average of 25 minutes. 

Determinants of commuting time

In general, urban structure and geographic characteristics of work and housing locations are important determinants of commuting.

Examining the “trends in commuting time of European workers,” José Ignacio Giménez-Nadal and his colleagues highlighted that relationships between commuting time and a range of country characteristics are complex. 

They found that “better road infrastructures, higher unemployment rates, and per-capita-GDP are related to shorter average commuting times, while higher motorisation rates are related to longer average commuting times”.

Share of non-commuters is higher in some countries

Looking at the details of commuting trends, 4.3 per cent of employed persons did not need to travel at all in order to get to their main place of work in the EU.

Slovenia had the highest share of “zero minutes” at 11.8 per cent, followed by Belgium (8 per cent), Ireland (7.9 per cent) and the UK (7.6 per cent).

The proportion of non-commuters was below 2 per cent in Greece and Italy. 

We can broadly group commute times into three categories for a more detailed analysis:

• 1-29 minutes
• 30-59 minutes
• 60 minutes and over

 

In the EU, nearly six in 10 people (61.3 per cent) had a commute of less than 30 minutes, while about one in four (26.3 per cent) travelled between 30 and 59 minutes from home to work.

These times reflect one-way trips without any detours.

Among EU countries, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, and Portugal had the highest shares of people (over 70 per cent) commuting for 1-29 minutes, meaning that employees in these countries typically had shorter commutes to work.

More than a third of employed people in Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary commuted for between 30 and 59 minutes.

Who spends over an hour commuting the most?

In 2019, more than 10 per cent of employed people in four EU countries and the UK had commutes of 60 minutes or longer.

The highest percentages, ranging from 10.6 per cent to 13.5 per cent, were recorded in Latvia, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, and Hungary.

Across the EU as a whole, 8.1 per cent of employed people commuted for an hour or more.

The table above provides a more detailed breakdown of commuting time categories.

Southern European countries  (Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, and Italy) tend to have shorter commutes, while Eastern European (Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary) countries see a higher share of longer commutes.

Western and Northern European countries show a more balanced mix of commuting times.

‘A historic transformation of work’

On the other hand, remote work has increasingly become a significant part of modern work life.

“The world is navigating through a historic transformation of work,” Pawel Adrjan, head of EMEA research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told Euronews Next. 

“Our data shows that searches for remote and hybrid work are at or near all-time highs in France, Germany, Spain and the UK”.

While commute time and working remotely are different indicators, Eurostat expects that the situation would have changed.

Most of the saved time goes back to employers

A recent studyfound that while commuters save a lot of time by avoiding travel, much of that “saved time” is given back to their employers.

According to research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), those who worked from home during the pandemic spent, on average, 40 per cent of their saved time on primary and secondary jobs, 34 per cent on leisure (24 minutes), and 11 per cent on caregiving (8 minutes).

Longer commutes linked to lower wellbeing

In their analysis of the “commuters’ burden” across 35 European countries, Toon Zijlstra and Ann Verhetsel found a clear link between longer commute times and lower well-being.

Their research shows that individuals with longer commutes tend to report reduced levels of well-being.

Public transportation satisfaction levels across European capitals and cities vary significantly.

What does commute time really mean?

According to Eurostat, usual commuting time refers to the most frequently used mode of transport in normal weather, excluding extreme conditions or unusual traffic.

If two transport modes are used equally (eg a car half the time and a bus the other half), respondents estimate the average commuting time.