In 2018, for the first time, people who took public transportation to work in the U.S. had higher median earnings than those who drove themselves. But the highest-earning people in the “median earnings by means of transportation to work” statistics released by the Census Bureau last month were those who didn’t commute at all.The earnings advantage of public transportation users is mainly just a reflection of where the buses, subways and commuter trains are. The New York, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco and Boston metropolitan areas together accounted for almost 63% of the Americans who took public transportation to work, and pay is higher in those metropolitan areas than in the U.S. as a whole.Those who work at home are much more widely distributed. Their income advantage stems not from geography but from the kinds of work that can be done remotely — white-collar more than blue-collar, high-tech more than low-tech, etc. That work has apparently been getting better: In 2010, those who worked from home made 11% less than those who drove to work. In 2018, they made 5% more.Over this same period the number of people who reported working at home has risen from 5.9 million to 8.3 million, while their share of American workers has gone from 4.3% to 5.3%. The rise began in the early 2000s, as the spread of home broadband connections made new kinds of at-home work possible.
Seguir leyendo, aquí
