Among the six Mitchell-boosting anecdotes in the Secretary of State’s allegedly statewide but sketchy economic report is a page on Dakota Wesleyan College soccer coach and prof (the report says he’s a prof but doesn’t say of what) John Hakari’s choice to commute (the report says he drives an hour but doesn’t say from where). Hakari says fuel prices are biting:
Hakari emphasized that economic conditions, especially gas prices and inflation, directly influence his commuting decisions. As he noted, “you can see the reflection in your bank account even in just a month,” highlighting how quickly rising fuel costs impact personal finances [Secretary of State Monae L. Johnson and Dakota Wesleyan University, 2026 Q1 Business and Economic Data Analysis Summary, 2026.05.21, p. 12].
…but not enough to overturn the economic logic of his long commute:
Despite these increased costs, he continues commuting because the benefits of his role outweigh the expenses.
Hakari also pointed out that higher-paying or more specialized jobs tend to justify longer commutes, reinforcing the idea that workers travel to maximize income and opportunity. This reflects a broader economic principle: when individuals commute to roles that better utilize their skills, overall productivity increases, contributing to economic growth and higher output.
Overall, Hakari’s experience shows that while commuting creates financial and time-related tradeoffs, it also improves job matching and workforce productivity, factors that directly influence economic indicators such as GDP and labor market efficiency [SOS/DWU, 2026.05.21, p. 12.
But are we really getting increased productivity, higher output, and a more efficient labor market? Obviously, Hakari enjoys coaching soccer—he does it for the Sioux Falls Thunder, too—but is the economy really getting more out of Hakari spending two hours each day risking his life and burning fuel on I-90 (I’m assuming that’s his preferred route) while he produces nothing?
Ten years ago, the Washington Post noted the opportunity cost of the nation’s commute time:
According to the Census, there were a little over 139 million workers commuting in 2014. At an average of 26 minutes each way to work, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that works out to something like a total of 1.8 trillion minutes Americans spent commuting in 2014. Or, if you prefer, call it 29.6 billion hours, 1.2 billion days, or a collective 3.4 million years. With that amount of time, we could have built nearly 300 Wikipedias, or built the Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times — all in 2014 alone [Christopher Ingraham, “The Astonishing Human Potential Wasted on Commutes,” Washington Post, 2016.02.25].
Broad economic theory suggests higher wages make commuting pay off, but broader empirical data show commuting doesn’t make our lives richer literally or figuratively:
According to the Alonso–Muth–Mills spatial model [5,6,7], the increase in commuting time is offset by a higher wage and greater demand for housing. The burden of commuting is compensated so that individuals’ utility is equalized. However, commuting has been shown to have negative consequences for workers. People with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being [8]. Clark et al. [9] found that an additional 20 min of commuting each working day is equivalent to a 19 percent annual pay cut. Shorter commute times and walkable commutes can improve well-being.
…Our research found that the extension of commuting time has a negative impact. The longer the commute, the lower the satisfaction with work and life; the length of commuting can also cause damage to health, affecting physical health and causing inactivity [Libin Han, Chong Peng, and Zhenyu Xu, “The Effect of Commuting Time on Quality of Life: Evidence from China,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022.12.29].
In knowledge work, Harvard Business prof Andy Wu finds that commuting makes workers less creative, innovative, and productive:
Wu’s conclusions were clear: A long commute hurts workers and their employers by hindering creativity and productivity, which stifles innovation, according to his recent Journal of Urban Economics article Commuting and Innovation: Are Closer Inventors More Productive?
“It’s amazing how robust the results are. Commuting hurts both innovative quantity and quality,” especially for an organization’s highest-performing workers, says Wu of the three-year analysis he conducted with coauthors Hongyu Xiao and Jaeho Kim, both of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
…When measuring the number and quality of patented inventions by high-tech inventors, Wu and his colleagues found that for every 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of added travel distance, the firm employing those inventors registered 5 percent fewer patents. The quality of the patents took an even bigger dive, dropping 7 percent with every 6.2 miles added to the inventors’ commute.
The most talented inventors suffered the most; the greatest productivity losses were found among the highest-performing inventors, those among the top 10 percent.
The results show “for inventors with long commutes, any distance you can reduce the commute, you can gain in innovative productivity,” Wu says. And the findings “absolutely can apply” to a wide variety of skilled and creative workers, not just high-tech inventors, he says [Lane Lambert, “Commuting Hurts Productivity and Your Best Talent Suffers Most,” Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge, 2021.03.30].
And we’re not even touching on the opportunities we lose in commuting that never show up in GDP: using those two extra hours a day to tend the garden, enjoy a healthy breakfast, read a book, take your sweetheart for a walk in the park, volunteer at the Bishop Dudley House, make signs for the next No Kings rally….
In publishing this latest economic report, the Secretary of State is getting basic economic research wrong. Commuting is not a great economic boon; it’s more of a drag on workers’ productivity, finances, and well-being.