Romanian employees travel the shortest daily commuting distances in Europe, yet spend nearly 53 minutes on the road every day. It is a paradox that says less about infrastructure and more about how working hours are structured, where offices are located, and how flexible hybrid-work policies really are.

The data come from the SD Worx HR & Payroll Pulse study, conducted between 27 January and 20 February 2026, covering 16,500 employees and 5,936 HR decision-makers across 16 European countries. The headline finding: Romanian workers travel an average of 17 km (round trip) per day, the shortest distance in the study, yet their time on the road places Romania 6th in Europe. The European average distance is 45 km; the self-declared acceptable commute time across Europe is 62 minutes.

What the numbers show

Sixty-three percent of Romanian respondents report a daily round-trip commute of between 10 and 29 km, compared with the European average of 27%. Only 47% of Romanian employees manage to reach the office in under 45 minutes. At the other end, 16% spend at least 90 minutes commuting each day (versus a 13% European average), and 11% exceed two hours.

The threshold Romanian employees themselves describe as acceptable is 51 minutes per day. In other words, the actual average of 53 minutes already exceeds that limit, and in the Bucharest-Ilfov region the gap becomes substantial: 73 minutes on average for just 16 km, nearly 10 minutes above the 63-minute ceiling that local employees say they can tolerate.

In the other seven development regions of Romania, average commute times range between 43 and 49 minutes. Bucharest-Ilfov is not merely a statistical outlier; it is a category of its own: 51% of respondents there spend at least one hour on the road daily, 33% at least 90 minutes, and 23% two hours or more.

The infrastructure perception paradox

Counter-intuitively, Romanians rank among the most satisfied Europeans when it comes to available transport options. Sixty-one percent say they have sufficient options for getting to work, the second-highest share in the study after the Netherlands (70%). Fifty-two percent rate public transport as convenient, reliable and affordable, the highest percentage among all 16 countries, against a European average of 36%.

In Bucharest-Ilfov, 58% rate public transport positively, the highest share among Romanian regions, even though this is also where the longest average commute times are recorded. The translation: the problem is not an absence of transport options, but that travel time remains high because of traffic density and the way working days are structured. By comparison, Belgium has Europe's longest commutes (64 km, 61 minutes), followed by Sweden (53 km, 57 minutes) and Ireland (47 km, 56 minutes). At the opposite end sit Croatia (37 km, 41 minutes), Italy (42 km, 35 minutes) and Slovenia (42 km, 32 minutes).

For employees: what this means for you

If you are based in Bucharest-Ilfov and spend more than an hour a day commuting, you are in the majority: 51% of employees in the region are in the same position. That time does not appear on your payslip, but it carries a real cost, in energy and in money. Forty-three percent of Bucharest-Ilfov employees say commuting eats into time they could otherwise spend on work, compared with 35% nationally.

Preferences are clear and, more importantly, measurable. Forty-eight percent of Romanian respondents want to keep the same amount of remote work they currently have; 38.2% want more (slightly above the European average of 35.8%); and 13.7% want less. In Bucharest-Ilfov, 47% would prefer to work from home more often, while only 10% want less remote work. This is not about abolishing the office, it is about organising working days more intelligently.

In practical terms, this gives you solid grounds for a salary negotiation or for renegotiating your working conditions: 51 minutes a day is the self-declared acceptable threshold, and if you consistently exceed it, the extra time is a cost your employer is effectively passing on to you. When comparing a new offer against your current role, factor in the commute as part of the total package: 20 working days × 30 additional minutes per day equals 10 hours a month, the equivalent of more than a full day of unpaid work.

For HR professionals and recruiters: what this means for your strategy

In a market where Bucharest-Ilfov employees already exceed their stated acceptability threshold by 10 minutes a day, and where 47% of them would prefer to work from home more often, hybrid-work policy is no longer a differentiating benefit. It has become a baseline condition for attracting and retaining competitive candidates. Competitors that offer structured flexibility, adaptable start times, and a clear link between in-office presence and activities that genuinely benefit from face-to-face collaboration will recruit from your talent pool.

Ciprian Chiorean, Managing Director of SD Worx Romania, put the implication directly: "The commute is not just an infrastructure issue, it directly affects the employee experience. Companies cannot control traffic, but they can reduce the time cost through flexibility, adapted start times, clear hybrid policies, and a better alignment between office presence and activities that truly benefit from in-person collaboration. The data show that most employees are not asking to eliminate the office, they are asking for smarter organisation of their commuting days."

For an HR leader planning the recruitment and retention budget for 2026–2027, the figures offer several clear decision points:

, Audit your current hybrid policy: how many days of office presence do you mandate versus what employees would actually prefer? If your mandates exceed three days a week in Bucharest-Ilfov, check whether this is justified by the nature of the work or is simply a pre-pandemic convention that has persisted.

, Flexible start times: an arrival window of 08:00–10:30 can cut average commute time by 15–20 minutes for employees in congested regions, with no meaningful operational cost.

, Align presence with activity: office days need a reason, workshops, collaborative sessions, team reviews. Presence for its own sake, the SD Worx data confirm, is a cost employees notice and for which they actively seek alternatives.

, Be explicit in your job adverts: state the hybrid model clearly, number of remote days and schedule flexibility. Candidates trying to reduce their commute are actively filtering on these criteria.

Retention carries an invisible cost in this equation: 43% of Bucharest-Ilfov employees feel that commuting time takes away from their productive hours. That figure translates into accumulated fatigue, marginal absenteeism, and ultimately into CVs sent to employers who offer better flexibility.

What comes next: infrastructure won't change, but policies can

Commute times in Bucharest-Ilfov will not fall over the next 12 months through infrastructure interventions. What can change quickly, within a single policy-review cycle, is the structure of the working day. The SD Worx study confirms that Romanian employees are not rejecting the office; they are rejecting the inefficiency of time lost on the road.

For employees, the data are a negotiating tool: 51 minutes is the threshold you declare acceptable, and any offer that consistently exceeds it should compensate for the difference, through salary, flexibility, or remote options. For HR, the figures are a retention-risk signal and an opportunity to differentiate in recruitment. In both cases, the decision should be made on data, not on assumptions.