Workers in these US cities will have the cheapest commutes as companies prepare to bring staff back to the office

Boise, Idaho.Darwin Fan/Getty Images

• Workers in these 20 US cities have the least costly commutes in the nation, a new analysis says.
• Tulsa, Oklahoma, has the shortest and least costly commute, at 37 minutes round-trip and $13 a day.
• Half of the cities with the 10 least costly commutes are also in the bottom 10 for median earnings.

Getting to the office each day can cost a lot of time and money. As companies draw up plans to bring staff back to in-person work, many people are dreading the idea of having to commute again.

Fortunately for workers in these 20 US cities, they have the least costly commutes in the nation, according to a new analysis from LendingTree. Commutes in these cities have the lowest opportunity costs which, in this case, is the value of the things people didn't do in the time they were commuting, such as sleeping in or being on the clock.

Read more: Employers are waging a war over work from home. WFH is winning.

Using the Census Bureau's 2019 one-year American Community Survey, the latest available federal data, the analysts looked at commute times for the 100 biggest cities in the US by worker count.

They then used Census Bureau data to estimate the average hourly earnings in these cities. When they multiplied this by the commute time, they were able to calculate these commutes' opportunity costs.

Here are the cities where American workers lose the least money when they're stuck in traffic: