Irrespective of how beautiful your ferry route is, or how shiny Sydney’s new metro system happens to be, commuting to work is unlikely to make it to the top of your favourite activities hit list. Sydney might be home to some of the most beautiful commutes in the country (we’re calling it – possibly the world), but the journey into work can still be a drag. With that in mind, new data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (HILDA) identifying Sydney as the home of Australia’s longest average commute isn’t music to our ears. According to the data, Sydneysiders are spending 70 fewer minutes commuting each week compared with 2019 – but the gain in spare time doesn’t necessarily mean we’re less stressed.
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The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey is the only survey of its scale in the country – interviewing more than 17,000 Australians about everything from paycheques and school runs, to health and happiness, and even who in the household cooks dinner. The one-of-a-kind, lifelong study follows participants year after year, giving researchers an accurate snapshot of how a broad swathe of Aussies actually live.
The data covers a heap of different topics, including how much time Australians across the country spend journeying into work, and Sydneysiders are doing it tough. On average, Sydney-based workers are spending 59 minutes every day commuting – that’s 3 minutes more than Brisbaneites (who spend an average of 56 minutes a day commuting) and 4 minutes more than Melburnians. In Adelaide, commute times are now sitting at an average of 50 minutes per week, and the average city worker in Perth commutes for 52 minutes every week.
The good news is, commute times are decreasing across the country since the pandemic. In 2019, Sydneysiders spent an average of 73 minutes commuting every day, which means we’ve gained 14 minutes back every working day (that’s 70 extra minutes every week).
According to HILDA, hours spent working from home nearly doubled in 2020, with the share of people logging on exclusively from their living rooms quadrupling overnight. While those changes have eased as offices reopened, Australians are still working remotely far more than they did pre-pandemic – a trend that’s reshaped commuting, family routines and the rhythm of daily life. But the picture isn’t all rosy: although cutting down on travel has freed up time (theoretically giving Sydneysiders more time to spend working out or hitting local happy hours), the blurred lines between home and work have also brought fresh pressures – with people working from home reporting higher levels of time stress than their office-bound counterparts.
You can read the full report, and deep-dive into how Aussies are living in 2025, over here.
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