Maybe the city that never sleeps just doesn’t get home in time to hit the sack.
A recent report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer says that, including commuting time, city residents have the longest workweek in the nation. With toilers logging more than six hours to and from work, the average work / commute total for a New York City resident with a full-time job is about 49 hours. That’s higher than the total in the nation’s other big cities, and higher than the national numbers.
In Los Angeles the average total is just under 47 hours. In Chicago it’s just under 48.
This really doesn’t come as a shock to us: We know we work hard, and that getting to and from our daily grind chamber is an additional grind. And it’s largely our longest-in-the-nation commute average of 6 hours and 42 minutes per week that makes living here so tough.
And as hard as the workweek is on borough residents compared to folks in other cities or car-drenched suburbs of our nation, the off days are just as tough, relatively speaking. In outer Akron, you can hit the grocery store, dry cleaner, hardware store, clothing store, shoe store and drugstore in an hour, and park in front of each. You don’t have to dedicate 16 hours each weekend to chores, and walk for blocks like a sherpa, laden with shopping bags, furniture and mountainous quantities of clean and dirty clothing.
But folks in the suburbs and lesser cities don’t get to live in this greatest metropolis, and much of the challenge of city living is getting easier in the age of online ordering, apps, pick-up service and Zipcars. Most Americans are prisoners of their cars, and their strip malls, and their lack of options. It’s a rare privilege to be able to walk to the coffee shop, the movie theater or the museum.
If you’re ever in outer Akron, try ordering a quick delivery of lox or Kimchi or nigiri or naan. You’ll quickly remember why it makes sense to endure such hardship to work and commute and do chores: to live in a place that’s so worth the effort.
