Commuting farther for high-paid workers

15 largest US cities are experiencing the more money you earn, the more time you spend going to work.

It might sound like nightmare for David Campana’s one and a half hour commute by car, then by subway and last by foot, from his New Jersey apartment to his lower Manhattan office. Bu this chief technology officer in his mid-thirties loves his commute.

He looks forward everyday to walking among the million of strangers on Manhattan’s streets aside from his morning ritual of reading on the train. Campana is hesitant to move closer to his job since his kids are already studying in Jersey and they have a huge apartment compared to renting in a cramped Manhattan flat.
 
"If you want your money to go further," Campaña said, "you have to live farther away."

Bigger Areas Mean Longer Commutes

According to Seattle’s PayScale.com, that provides real-time salary information to employers and individuals, New York’s professionals are using more of their time on commuting to and from work than in any other large metro area.

BusinessWeek.com partnered with PayScale to rank the largest metros based on ordinary commute time for a worker who is earning more than $100,000 a year. 39.3 minutes would be the typical one-way commute for a worker in New York on that salary bracket compared to 23.7 minutes in Minneapolis, which had the shorted commute time.

Generally, the areas with large populations have most-time consuming commutes. Densely populated places and pricey places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington have the longest commutes for professionals.  

But it's not necessarily good to have jobs spread across suburbs like butter. Traffic is so bad around the Washington area because people are not just traveling to and from the city; they're commuting from suburb to suburb. Most Americans have suburb-to-suburb commutes these days, which explains the heavy traffic outside of cities.