Study Says New Yorkers Who Work From Home Are Healthier

Most people in the Southern Tier don't have insanely long commutes but it's not uncommon for someone who lives 30 or so minutes from their job to occasionally have the trip take nearly an hour thanks to accidents, construction, and weather-related things but it's generally not an everyday thing.

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Now, imagine that you're someone who has to spend an average of an hour driving to work and home from work every single day. This was the reality for 2.4 million New Yorkers until the pandemic saw them working from home.

Pretty much all businesses and organizations are fully open and business leaders have pushed their employees back into the office (just in time for gas prices to soar) but by doing that, they may be sending their employees into a backward spiral.

Swiss economists researched long commutes and say that long commutes destroy happiness which is a pretty big finding because prior to this new research, the longstanding belief was that long commutes did not make people more unhappy than those who had a shorter commute to work.

People who have long commutes are downright miserable and while they might be good at masking it, their attitude eventually seeps into their work environment but that's not all.

The study researchers also found that a person’s likelihood of becoming obese increases by 6 percent for every single hour that they spend commuting and this is coupled with the risk of high blood pressure, too.

New Yorkers who were able to work from home during the pandemic ended up being the ones who reaped the health benefits. Indeed, 1AND1 Life and a mental health and wellness performance company looked at data from County Health Rankings and found that 2.4 million New Yorkers who switched to working from home are now living healthier lives with fewer mental and physical problems.

Of those New Yorkers who work from home, 58 percent say the biggest benefit they see is that they're able to spend more time with their family. 20 percent say they're getting better sleep than they were getting when they had to commute, 14 percent said they now have time to get chores done before the day starts, one in ten really like that they're able to get in a daily workout now, and one in five say they're making healthier breakfasts.

If your employer is tossing around the idea of allowing you to work from home, but isn't completely sold on the idea, maybe show this to them!