America, on average, gets to work at 7:55 a.m. People who are employed in Ann Arbor get to work at 8:15 a.m. That's not very impressive. Granted, it's better than New Yorkers, who leisurely arrive at 8:24 a.m. –nearly 30 minutes later than the national average.
All of these numbers are from Nate Silver's blog. He analyzed and explained data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau's "American Community Survey."
Here's a graph from fivethirtyeight.com that lists all the major slow-moving cities:
Silver's blog featured another graph that listed all the cities that are "getting the worm." Hinesville, Georgia arrives at work at an ungodly 7:01 a.m.
There may be a reason for that drastic shift in arrival times. Silver broke down all the cities listed into three categories:
- Cities that are home to a lot of "young, creative professionals" (read: New York, San Francisco)
- College towns – Ithaca or Ann Arbor
- Cities that make the majority of their money from recreational industries, like gambling and tourism.
That's why, according to Silver, "a quarter of the workforce in Atlantic City doesn't begin its workday until 11:26 a.m. or after."
Similarly, Hinesville, Georgia (the really early city) is home to a lot of people in the military, so they go to work earlier. A few other early-working places are centered around farming.
– Lucy Perkins, Michigan Radio Newsroom
