US Office Workers Pay Nearly $7,000 a Year to Show Up

American workers spend an average of $6,736 each year simply to show up at the office, according to a study by resume-building platform Resume.io. That figure, drawn from federal wage, commuting, fuel and price data across the 36 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, puts a hard number on the friction between employers pushing return-to-office mandates and employees resisting them.

Commuting is the single biggest line item. It accounts for more than 40% of total office-related costs, or $2,751 a year, covering public transit, gas and other expenses. Food and coffee add another $2,598 annually.

And the bill is growing. More than half of workers, 53.2%, said their office costs have risen over the past 12 months. Only 5.9% reported their costs falling.

Resume.io built its "return-to-office tax index" from government data and a survey of 1,000 full-time office workers, who reported their weekly spending on getting to work, parking, eating and childcare.

Where the costs bite hardest

The results upend assumptions about expensive coastal hubs. Once local salaries are taken into account, some of the country's most expensive cities — New York, Boston and San Francisco — rank among the least costly places to be an office worker. High pay offsets the high prices.

Orlando, Florida, carries the highest commuting tax relative to salary, followed by Riverside, California; San Antonio, Texas; Tampa, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee.

In pure dollar terms, Austin, Texas, is the most expensive city for commuters, costing them an average of $7,424 per year. The city also has the longest average commute in the country. Riverside comes second at $7,403, followed by Orlando ($7,351), Sacramento ($7,351) and San Francisco ($7,294). Las Vegas is the cheapest place to be a commuter, at $5,588 a year.

The time cost compounds the dollar cost

Money is only part of the ledger. Office workers spend an average of 184 hours a year commuting — the equivalent of 23 full workdays, the study found. Getting ready adds more: workers spend an average of 43.4 minutes longer preparing for an office day than for a day working from home. That preparation gap accounts for another 137 hours a year, or 17 workdays.

Taken together, the office demands roughly 40 workdays a year in transit and grooming before any actual work begins.

Employers keep tightening the screws anyway

More than six years after the start of the pandemic, return-to-office policies remain hotly debated. Employers have continued to push for more face time regardless. According to CBRE, 89% of U.S. companies now expect employees to come in at least three days a week, up from 78% in 2025 — even as actual attendance often lags employers' expectations.

Some companies are reading the room. Barclays said today that it would delay enforcement of its new hybrid work policy until the start of 2027, a response to employee pushback against stricter in-office requirements.

The tension is unlikely to resolve soon. With most large employers hardening attendance mandates while workers absorb a five-figure annual cost in money and time, the return-to-office debate has shifted from preference to economics — and the $6,736 figure gives both sides a concrete number to argue over.