- Super commuters are willing to travel three or more hours to get to and from work.
- For some, maintaining their lifestyle and traveling makes more sense than moving closer to work.
- For one commuter it was "an investment worth making" that allowed him to prioritize his family.
Some people are choosing to live in cheaper cities or close to family and still make it to the office hundreds of miles away. Enter the super commuter, or those willing to travel three or more hours to work.
Take Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter. To meet the publication's in-office mandate three days a week, Cutter described in an essay how he commutes to Midtown Manhattan from his home base in Columbus, Ohio. It's a less than two-hour flight covering over 500 miles.
In the personal essay published on January 7, Cutter said the benefits of living in Ohio — nightly walks with his sister, proximity to his parents — outweighed those of moving to New York, where he figured he'd spend as much on a subpar studio apartment as on his apartment in Columbus plus travel costs — around $3,200 a month.
Cutter's decision may sound extreme, but he isn't alone. As companies lean into hybrid work models after the era of remote work, many employees, like Cutter, are unwilling to give up the perks of working from anywhere.
According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans who had a commute of 90 minutes or more doubled from 1990 to 2019 to 3.1%. Many long-haul commuters cite preserving a lower cost of living as their primary motive for enduring the grind of planning, hours in the air, and nights in hotels. The argument goes that spending a few hundred dollars here and there for flights is worth it to save plenty more in rent.
Sophia Celentano accepted a 10-week internship this summer, 700 miles away from her parents' house in Charleston, where she was living. Since she only needed to be in the office in New Jersey one day a week, she figured a few $100 round-trip flights and a handful of Ubers a month would be well worth the cost instead of paying rent in the tristate area.
She was right. Calentano spent about $800 a month on travel, she said. According to Zillow, New Jersey's median rent now hovers around $2,500.
Lindsay Callihan lived in Cary, North Carolina, but needed to be in her Manhattan office two to three days every other week. Callihan footed the bill for all the flights, Ubers, and subway fares required to make the 1,000-mile round trip once a month.
All the travel was still less than paying New York City rent, she told BI in October. She saved even more money by eschewing hotels and staying with her sister in New York. She's since committed to living in the city full-time, but the experience didn't turn her off from super commuting in the future.
"It's something I would consider doing again," Callihan said. "I love North Carolina, and I think I'll definitely find my way back there."
Joel Berntsen, who lives in Connecticut, enjoys working remotely but also sees the perks of being in the office.
Berntsen accepted a senior leadership role for a company based in Salt Lake City in 2021 with no intent of uprooting his family from their life on the East Coast. He picked a week or two during the month to work in Utah because he saw the value in being face-to-face with his team.
Berntsen, who recently left the job in Utah, told BI he thinks he was able to make an outsize impact on the company because of his decision to be there in person. He added, "It's definitely an investment worth making and allowed me to continue having that family balance that I was looking for."
For many super commuters, the pros seem to outweigh the cons — but that may not be the case for everyone.
Some super commuters, like Berntsen, have their travel costs paid for by the company. Others, like Cutter and Celentano, have to pay out of pocket. For Cutter, the math didn't work out. He shot through his travel budget by 15%. He's still doing the long haul but may have to rent that shoddy New York City studio at some point.
That plus the early morning wakeups to catch flights and the constant need to find a place to rest at the end of the day took its toll, Cutter wrote.
Malick Mercier, a regular flyer as a flight attendant, commutes from Los Angeles to his airline's base in New York City. The round trip can take up to 14 hours, he told BI in November. He doesn't do it for the savings, but because he loves his job.
He added, "Plenty of people are like, 'Is it worth it?' And I feel like, yes, because this is my dream."
