With return-to-office mandates now covering most U.S employers, going to work has quietly become one of the biggest costs in a lot of people’s budgets. With fuel up more than a quarter on last year, transit fares have risen in almost every major city, and the day you spend in the office comes with a price tag before you've even done a minute of work.
With this in mind, we set out to put a number on it. We analyzed federal wage, commuting and price data across the 36 largest U.S. metropolitan areas and surveyed 1,000 full-time office workers about what they actually spend each week getting to work, parking, eating, and their outfits.
The average? $6,736 a year, or 9.3% of a typical local salary. For working parents who pay for extra childcare while they’re in the office, it’s a staggering $16,538 annually.
Key Findings
- U.S. office workers spend an average of $6,736 a year on the cost of going into the office.
- Orlando has the highest “return-to-office" tax in America, taking 11.9% of the average local salary. San Jose has the lowest at just 6.0%.
- Austin is the most expensive city in dollar terms at $7,424 a year, thanks to the longest commute in the country. While Las Vegas is the cheapest city to be a commuter at just $5,588.
- Americans lose 23 working days a year to their commute, plus another 17 days just getting ready for work.
- More than half of office workers (53.2%) say their costs have gone up in the past 12 months.
Orlando Workers Hand Over 11.9% of Their Salary Just to Show Up
Ask most people which U.S city is the most expensive for office workers and you’ll often hear New York or San Francisco. While in raw dollars that’s not far off, when measured against what people in the city actually earn, the data tells a different story.
Orlando workers, on average, spend $7,351 which is 11.9% of their annual salary just on their commute into the office. Closely followed by Riverside at 11.4% and San Antonio at 11.1%.
Every single one of the eight most heavily taxed metros is in the Sun Belt, the cities that grew fastest through the remote-work years, where people moved out in search of housing they could afford and now drive a long way back in.
Riverside is the clearest example. 85.3% of Riverside commuters drive and just 0.9% take public transport. They're covering nearly 30 road miles each way at California fuel prices, on the second-lowest average salary in our index. There isn't a cheaper way for them to get to work, because there isn't another way at all.
Austin is the Most Expensive City to Work In, at $7,424 a Year
On raw annual cost, the top of the table is dominated by distance rather than expensive cities.
Austin comes first at $7,424 a year, this is because Austin workers travel further than anyone else in America at 33.4 road miles each. Not only that but more than a quarter of Austin jobs held by people are living more than 50 miles from the office.
California still takes three of the top five places, partially driven by having the highest fuel prices in the country at $5.47 a gallon in Los Angeles and San Francisco against a national average of $4.01, combined with long distances and heavy car dependence.
At the other end of the scale, Las Vegas is the cheapest place in America to be an office worker at $5,588 a year. This is helped by the shortest commute distance in the index, 15.6 miles (barely half of Austin’s commute), in a metro compact enough that nearly two-thirds of workers live within ten miles of their job.
The Commute Is the Biggest Cost, but Work Lunches are a Close Second
Across the 36 largest US metros, the average full-time worker spends $6,736 annually on the direct, out-of-pocket costs of going into the office. Working out at $34.73 for every day spent in the office.
Getting to and from work, unsurprisingly, comes out at the highest expense coming in at $2,751 a year, 40.8% of the share. Taking into account a number of costs including public transit and gas.
Food and coffee bought out when in the office comes to a staggering $2,598 a year, nearly as much as the commute itself. It's also the costs that are overlooked by many workers due to it coming out in small increments rather than calculated as a whole payment.
Office Workers Lose 23 Working Days a Year to Their Commute
The data revealed that the average full-time office workers across these 36 metros spends 184 hours a year commuting. That’s the equivalent of 23 full eight-hour working days. In New York, it’s as high as 236 hours – nearly 30 working days. In Kansas City, the shortest in our index, it's 153.
Then there's everything that happens before you leave. We asked workers how much longer they spend getting ready on an office day compared with a day working from home, whether that be showering, dressing, doing their hair, making food to take in.
The answer was 43 minutes. Over a year, that's another 137 hours, or 17 working days.
Put together, that's more than 40 working days a year spent travelling to work and getting ready for it, before a single task gets done.
Not only that but the days found that the workers going into the office the least spend the longest getting ready. Workers in the office one day a week reported 50.8 minutes of extra preparation, against 41.3 minutes spent by those who are going in five days. It’s clear that going into the office rarely makes each trip more of an occasion.
More Than Half of Workers Say Their Office Costs Have Gone Up
Alongside the index, we surveyed 1,000 full-time workers across these 36 metros to understand the implications of returning to office.
Over half (53.2%) say their office costs have gone up in the past year with 19.1% saying “a lot” and 34.1% saying “slightly”. Only 5.9% say that costs have fallen.
What You Can Do About It
While you can’t change the price of fuel, you can make sure that you’re not absorbing these costs invisibly.
It’s always important to price the commute into any job offer before accepting. A role requiring five days on site and one requiring two aren’t the same salary, even when the number on the contract is identical. Across the 36 metros we analyzed, the difference is worth around $2,500 a year, considerably more if you’re paying for childcare.
Remember to ask what your company offers. Pre-tax commuter benefits whether that be a parking subsidy or transit pass cost employers relatively little and can save you well over $1,000 a year. Plenty to companies offer them but fail to mention it so it’s always worth confirming with them.
If the numbers don’t work, they don’t work. If your current role is costing you a quarter of your salary just to show up, it may be time to reconsider whether it’s the still right role for you. A strong, up-to-date resume is what turns that realization into options, resume.io's professional resume builder can help you frame your experience in a way that showcases your best skills.
Methodology
We analyzed the 36 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, identified by their official Core Based Statistical Area codes.
Salary data comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025), cross-checked against BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Commute times and travel modes come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (2024), and commute distances from Census LEHD LODES data (2023). Fuel prices come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and AAA (August 2026). Transit fares were collected directly from each city's transit agency and cross-checked against the APTA Fare Database. Price levels are adjusted using Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities (2024).
Costs for parking, food, coffee, childcare and work clothing come from our survey of 1,000 U.S. adults in full-time employment who work from an office at least one day a week, carried out by Pollfish in August 2026. Respondents were resident in the 36 metros studied and the data was weighted. The credibility interval is ±3.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Survey findings are reported nationally; city-level figures come from the index.
Time figures are scaled to measure attendance of 4.18 days a week — the weighted mean from our survey — not to a five-day week, which would overstate annual totals by around 20%. Preparation hours are calculated at respondent level rather than by multiplying averages, because the workers attending least reported the longest preparation time.
