In Travis County, 227,024 workers did not commute at all. They worked from home. That is 30.2 percent of the county's 751,869 workers, according to the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, and it is the biggest shift in how this region gets to work in the data we track: in the 2015 to 2019 survey our tract-level numbers put the share near 10 percent.
For anyone moving here, it changes the first question. "How far is it from downtown?" still matters. But "how many days a week will I make that drive?" can matter more, and the answer differs a lot from one county to the next.
How workers in five counties get to work
We pulled the Census Bureau's means-of-transportation table (B08301) for the five counties around Austin. Workers here means people 16 and older who had a job in the survey period.
| County | Workers | Work from home | Drive alone | Carpool | Transit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travis | 751,869 | 30.2% | 57.0% | 6.9% | 1.6% |
| Williamson | 354,535 | 25.4% | 63.9% | 7.7% | 0.3% |
| Hays | 138,834 | 18.1% | 69.6% | 8.6% | 0.5% |
| Bastrop | 48,379 | 15.7% | 68.4% | 10.8% | 0.4% |
| Caldwell | 21,509 | 9.9% | 77.2% | 9.1% | 0.2% |
Two things stand out. In Travis, Williamson and Hays counties, working from home is more common than carpooling, riding transit, biking and walking combined. And the share falls steadily as you move away from Travis County, which mostly tracks how jobs are spread across the region.
How much it moved
The same Census survey, in the five-year version covering 2015 to 2019, is loaded in our research database. We combined tract-level shares into county figures, weighting each tract by its household count. That is an approximation of the official county tables (which weight by workers), and it lands close: for 2020 to 2024 it gives Travis County 30.8 percent working from home and 56.6 percent driving alone, against the official 30.2 and 57.0.
| County | Work from home, 2015-19 | Work from home, 2020-24 | Drive alone, 2015-19 | Drive alone, 2020-24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travis | 9.8% | 30.8% | 74.1% | 56.6% |
| Williamson | 8.9% | 25.9% | 79.1% | 63.7% |
| Hays | 7.5% | 18.5% | 79.4% | 69.9% |
| Bastrop | 4.6% | 16.0% | 80.5% | 68.5% |
| Caldwell | 3.9% | 10.2% | 79.7% | 76.7% |
Travis County's drive-alone share fell about 17.5 points, and its work-from-home share rose about 21. Transit use in the county was 1.6 percent in the latest survey. The shift away from driving alone lines up with the rise in working from home, not with a move to the bus.
Two cautions. The survey asks how a worker usually got to work last week, so a hybrid week is counted under one answer. And the 2020 to 2024 window blends the pandemic years with the years since, so it is not a clean read on this fall's office schedules.
The commutes that remain are longer farther out
The Census also publishes travel time to work (table B08303), for people who leave home to work. These are one-way minutes as workers reported them, so they include real traffic.
| County | Commuters | Under 20 min | 30 min or more | 45 min or more | 60 min or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travis | 524,845 | 39.3% | 20.6% | 12.6% | 5.4% |
| Williamson | 264,347 | 34.8% | 27.9% | 19.0% | 7.6% |
| Hays | 113,668 | 33.5% | 35.9% | 26.4% | 12.4% |
| Bastrop | 40,783 | 29.4% | 45.3% | 35.8% | 19.1% |
| Caldwell | 19,375 | 31.2% | 40.5% | 31.3% | 19.8% |
The pattern is plain. In Travis County about one commuter in five spends 30 minutes or more each way. In Hays County it is more than one in three, and in Bastrop County it is about 45 percent. About one in five Bastrop and Caldwell County commuters reports an hour or more each way. That is the trade a longer commute carries, and the Census data shows what it costs in minutes.
What our parcel drive-time model adds
The Census numbers describe what people report. To compare locations before anyone has moved, we also keep drive times for residential parcels across the five appraisal districts, computed on a snapshot of the road network from October 13, 2026 and built October 14. These are free-flow minutes, meaning an empty road with no rush hour, so every real-world number will be longer. We measured each parcel to two job centers: downtown Austin and the Domain area in north Austin.
| County | Residential parcels | Median to downtown | Median to the Domain | Within 30 min of either |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travis | 268,202 | 18.2 min | 21.8 min | 90.4% |
| Williamson | 144,955 | 33.6 min | 25.0 min | 72.5% |
| Hays | 46,458 | 31.1 min | 44.1 min | 43.5% |
| Bastrop | 17,243 | 40.8 min | 49.8 min | 3.9% |
| Caldwell | 5,357 | 40.7 min | 52.2 min | 1.2% |
The useful detail is which direction the commute runs. The median Williamson County parcel is 25.0 minutes from the Domain on an empty road but 33.6 from downtown, while the median Hays County parcel is the opposite, 31.1 to downtown and 44.1 to the Domain. A workplace address matters more than a county name.
If you plan to ride CapMetro instead, schedules change. Our report on the Red Line trips cut from October 12 covers one recent example.
What this means if you're moving here
- Ask about the schedule, not only the address. Before you weigh a longer drive for a different kind of home, find out how many days a week you will actually commute. Two days is a very different trip than five.
- Test the route at your hour. Our drive times assume an empty road. Drive or map the trip at the time you would really travel, on a weekday, before you rely on any number.
- Pick the job center first. If your workplace is north of the river, a Williamson County address may be shorter than a Travis County one in the south. If you work downtown, the reverse is likely.
- Compare homes on what you can verify. Our relocation guide and neighborhood pages cover housing, tax and flood records, so you can compare places on documents rather than reputation.
What this data cannot say
- It is not a forecast. It describes 2020 to 2024. Employers have changed their office policies since, and the survey will not show that until a later release.
- It is county-wide. A county average hides a lot of variation between neighborhoods. We do not rank or grade places, and we do not describe who lives where.
- Our drive times are modeled, not measured. They have no traffic, no construction and no tolls. The Census travel times do include them, but they come from a survey with margins of error.
Sources: the U.S. Census Bureau's table B08301 for Travis County and its commuting topic page, with the 2020 to 2024 county tables read on October 16, 2026 through the Census Reporter interface to the same survey; the Census Bureau's guidance on ACS estimates. This is general education, not advice about your own situation.
If you are comparing places around a new job, talk to one of our local agents through the relocation page, or start with the research tools.