New Hampshire’s economy has been moving beyond the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, but some of the changes appear to be here to stay.
Alongside increased costs for housing, early care and education for young children, and food, the pandemic altered where people decided to live and how they accessed work. The biggest shift was an increase in the number of people working from home, while somewhat fewer people commuted out-of-state for work following the pandemic as well.
About 546,000 New Hampshire commuters, or approximately 72 percent of workers who were at least 16 years old, drove to work on their own to get to their job in 2024, while another 54,000, or 7 percent, carpooled to work. Slightly more than one in every 41 commuting New Hampshire residents, about 2.4 percent, walked to work. Approximately two percent either used public transit, a motorcycle, taxi, bicycle, or some other means to travel to their employment.
About 16.0 percent, or 121,000 New Hampshire residents age 16 or over who were working in 2024, worked from home. This percentage has declined from the 19.3 percent recorded in 2021, in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many workers shifted to remote or internet-based work. Comparable data were not available for 2020 due to disruptions associated with the pandemic, but 2021’s 19.3 percent was a major increase from the 7.3 percent of workers, or about 52,800, who worked from home in 2019.
While the jump in remote workers between 2019 and 2021 was the largest increase during the 2016 to 2024 period, the percentage of people working from home had already increased from 6.3 percent in 2016 to 7.3 percent in 2019. The pandemic-induced jump in working from home has faded somewhat, but has held at about 16 percent for the last two years. The pre-pandemic data, however, suggest that working from home was becoming more prevalent in New Hampshire before the impacts of the pandemic.
Conversely, fewer Granite Staters appear to be regularly commuting out of state to work. In the four years before 2020, the average percentage of Granite Staters who commuted out of state was about 15.2 percent, or about 107,000 people in 2019. The 2021 to 2024 average was 12.9 percent, totaling about 100,300 New Hampshire residents in 2024.
While fewer people appear to be commuting out of state for work, travel times to work do not appear to have changed much. Average travel time to work in 2019 was 28 minutes, with about 10.3 percent of commuters traveling more than an hour to get to work; the 2024 figures showed an average travel time of 27.5 minutes, with about 10.0 percent of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes each way. Average travel time in 2021 had dropped to 25.7 minutes, with about 8.0 percent of workers commuting for an hour or more, potentially due to more working from home or less traffic during 2021 relative to other years.
While commuters are very car-dependent in New Hampshire, not everyone has reliable access to a vehicle. About 17 percent of workers had only one vehicle available in their households, while about 2.1 percent reported that there was no vehicle available, in 2024. Previously released data suggest financial barriers to car ownership, fueling, and maintenance are significant factors in this lack of access.
To learn more about the latest Census data, including income, poverty, housing, and health insurance statistics, see NHFPI’s September 11, 2025 summary Latest U.S. Census Bureau Data Show Granite Staters’ Economic Well-Being Remained Steady and Did Not Improve in 2024.