The Commute Penalty Behind the Gender Wage Gap

The alarm rings at 6:10, and the day starts with a countdown. Lunches get packed, shoes get found, the daycare bag gets zipped, and traffic decides whether the calendar survives.

In 2024 the mean travel time sat at 27.2 minutes one way for U.S. workers who traveled to a workplace, and the share of 60-minute commutes rose to 9.3%. School schedules and child care pickup windows rarely flex when a highway slows.

The gender wage gap keeps showing up in paychecks, and parenthood keeps shaping who stays attached to work. Studies show that travel time serves as a core driver of maternal employment. Commute time takes the first bite of the day, and household economics follow. Across full-time workers, women earned 83.6% of men’s pay in 2023, based on median weekly earnings of $1,005 for women and $1,202 for men, and parenthood explains much of the distance. Cross-country evidence on child penalties traces the same story: after the first birth, mothers’ earnings fall and fathers’ earnings hold steadier.

In the United States, the labor force participation rate reached 74.0% for mothers with children under 18 in 2024 and 93.5% for fathers, and mothers with children under 6 participated at 68.3%. Those gaps widen when a commute expands the time required to keep a job outside the home.

A major U.S. study of commuting and household labor supply estimates that a 10-minute increase in two-way commute time reduces prime-age married women’s labor force participation by 4.4 percentage points. The effect grows for mothers with children under 5, where the same increase reduces employment outside the home by 6.6 percentage points. Estimates for married men stay far smaller in most specifications, which fits the way caregiving time concentrates on mothers.

Commute time also reshapes work hours for women who stay employed. The commuting study reports that a 10-minute increase in commute time links to about 0.62 to 0.82 fewer weekly hours and a 2.4 percentage point increase in part-time work among married women. Smaller paychecks follow even when employment continues.

The same research connects these outcomes to the shape and sprawl of metro areas. If two-way commutes had stayed at the 1980 level of 45 minutes instead of rising toward 54 minutes, married women’s participation in 2000 would have been about 4 percentage points higher, closing roughly 30% of the married participation gap. Minutes compound into wages, promotions, and retirement contributions.

Caregiving converts distance into pressure. In 2023 adults in households with children under 6 spent 2.3 hours per day on primary childcare activities, and women in those households devoted 1.2 hours per day to physical care compared with 34 minutes for men. Long trips squeeze these duties into smaller windows and raise the odds that one parent steps back from paid work.

Costs intensify the squeeze. The federal childcare prices database update covering 2019 through 2022 shows families spending between 8.9% and 16.0% of median income on full-day care for one child. Many families need two incomes, and they also need schedules that hold.

Labor economists see the tradeoff in job search data. A study of French administrative records finds gender differences in commute valuation that translate into women accepting jobs with about 4% lower hourly pay and about 12% shorter commutes after unemployment, even after detailed controls. The authors estimate that these preferences explain about 14% of the residual gender wage gap.

Consider a mid-career manager who sits on the promotion track and also handles afternoon logistics. A longer commute makes late meetings, travel, and client dinners harder to accept, so she steers toward roles with stable hours and nearby offices. That decision looks personal, and it aggregates into flatter leadership ranks and slower pay growth across an organization.

Companies feel the impact in turnover and leadership pipelines. Commute strain also links to wellbeing: a large study connects commuting time and driving to poorer mental health outcomes, which can erode engagement and performance over time.

Employers can treat proximity as a benefit with the same seriousness as health coverage. That means reducing the time tax between home and work through remote options, location choices, and schedule design.

Remote work already reduces commute pressure for millions. Global evidence shows average WFH days holding near one day per week across 2023 through early 2025 for college-educated employees.

Leaders can lock in the gains with discipline. Teams can cluster in-person days, set meeting blocks that respect pickup times, and use telework trends benchmarks to calibrate flexibility by occupation. For roles that require presence, satellite offices closer to residential hubs often beat a single headquarters that forces long daily trips.

Policy can reinforce the same goal. Zoning that supports mixed-use neighborhoods, transit that links housing to job centers, and permitting that encourages child care near employment corridors can shrink commute burdens at scale. The commuting-time study shows that city form shapes travel time, and that insight belongs in every economic development plan.

A shorter commute strengthens pay equity efforts alongside child care access, fair pay practices, and parental leave. Travel time deserves equal status because it shapes whether those supports translate into a stable job.

Mothers keep working when work fits inside the day. When leaders bring jobs closer, design schedules that hold, and preserve flexible options, they keep talent in the workforce and turn equality into earnings.