Clay County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Clay County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Clay County spend about 34 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 141 hours, about 5.9 full days, spent commuting. That is 29% less time on the road than the Illinois average of 23.6 minutes each way, a difference of 6.7 minutes.

Clay County holds about 0.1% of Illinois's population and accounts for roughly 0.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Clay County would save about 56 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,746 at the same national wage assumption used above.

Area	One-Way Commute	Daily Round-Trip	Yearly Time Spent	Estimated Yearly Cost	Local Road Traffic (VPD)
Clay County	16.9 min	33.8 min	141 hrs/yr	$4,364	572
Illinois	23.6 min	47.3 min	197 hrs/yr	$6,104	1,547
United States	22.4 min	44.8 min	187 hrs/yr	$5,790	1,355

The estimated yearly cost applies a single national rule of thumb (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics average hourly earnings), not a measurement of wages in this area - treat it as a rough estimate, not a paycheck figure. Local road traffic counts, vehicles per day on non-highway roads, come from proprietary Ticon and TrafficZoom data.

Commute Time Map: Illinois Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 16.9 minutes to get to work in Clay County. That's 25% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 75% of counties in Illinois

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 06:00 AM – 06:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 4.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Clay County

• Car: 94.7% unusually high
• Worked at Home: 4.4% unusually low
• Walked: 0.6% unusually low
• Public Transportation: 0.3% unusually low
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Other: < 0.1%
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is unusually rare in Clay County: 30754972.0 times less than the Illinois average (0.0% vs 0.1%).

Driving is 29% more common in Clay County than the Illinois average (94.7% vs 73.7%).

Walking is unusually rare in Clay County: 4.6 times less than the Illinois average (0.6% vs 2.8%).

Public transit is unusually rare in Clay County: 19.0 times less than the Illinois average (0.3% vs 5.8%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Clay County, versus 0.3% in Illinois.

Working from home is unusually rare in Clay County: 3.6 times less than the Illinois average (4.4% vs 15.9%).

Biking is unusually rare in Clay County: 311224750.6 times less than the Illinois average (0.0% vs 0.5%).

Few people walk or bike to work in Clay County: just 0.6%, 5.6 times below the Illinois average of 3.3%.

Commute Mode Trends in Clay County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Clay County get to work, as a share of all workers aged 16 and over, across 16 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) releases from 2009 to 2024. Each release is a 5-year estimate: the 2024 figures cover surveys taken from 2020 to 2024. Because neighboring releases share most of their survey years, the lines move gradually, and a sudden change such as the rise of remote work in 2020 spreads across several releases. Hover over or tap a line to highlight it, and use the legend to show or hide a mode. Driving starts hidden so the smaller modes stay readable.

• Car
• Worked at Home
• Walked
• Public Transportation
• Taxi
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle
• Other

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Public Transportation	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Other
2009	90.1%	3.4%	4.3%	0.4%	0.0%	0.2%	0.2%	1.3%
2010	90.4%	3.2%	4.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%	0.4%	1.7%
2011	90.4%	3.0%	4.2%	0.4%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%	1.5%
2012	91.6%	3.2%	3.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.2%	0.7%	0.7%
2013	94.3%	2.5%	1.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.2%	1.1%	0.5%
2014	94.6%	2.8%	1.2%	0.4%	0.0%	0.2%	0.6%	0.3%
2015	94.8%	2.3%	1.1%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.9%	0.1%
2016	93.9%	2.6%	1.1%	1.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.8%	0.4%
2017	93.9%	2.5%	1.2%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.8%	0.5%
2018	92.0%	4.5%	1.7%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.5%
2019	90.5%	5.8%	2.1%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.5%
2020	90.5%	5.6%	2.2%	0.9%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.8%
2021	90.3%	7.1%	1.8%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.4%
2022	90.0%	8.1%	1.5%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	92.6%	6.2%	0.8%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2024	94.7%	4.4%	0.6%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share was highest in 2015 at 94.8% and lowest in 2022 at 90.0%. Overall it rose from 90.1% in 2009 to 94.7% in 2024, up 4.6 percentage points. It has risen in each of the last 2 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Clay County: its share of workers rose from 3.4% in 2009 to 4.4% in 2024, up 1.0 percentage points.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 4.3% to 0.6% of workers (down 3.7 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2013 release and has stayed ahead since.

Working from home peaked at 8.1% in 2022 and has since fallen back to 4.4%.

Commute Start Times in Clay County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Clay County?

The bars show when commuters in Clay County leave home for work, as a share of everyone who commutes (people who work from home are not counted), from the 2024 ACS 5-year estimates. The thin violet marks show Illinois for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Clay County4.7% Illinois5.6%	4.7%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Clay County5.2% Illinois4.3%	5.2%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Clay County8.4% Illinois4.9%	8.4%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Clay County12.4% Illinois9.0%	12.4%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Clay County11.8% Illinois9.4%	11.8%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Clay County12.3% Illinois14.3%	12.3%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Clay County14.8% Illinois11.6%	14.8%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Clay County4.0% Illinois11.2%	4.0%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Clay County0.5% Illinois5.2%	0.5%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Clay County0.6% Illinois6.1%	0.6%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Clay County1.8% Illinois2.9%	1.8%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Clay County1.1% Illinois1.5%	1.1%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Clay County12.0% Illinois7.7%	12.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Clay County10.4% Illinois6.3%	10.4%

Clay County Illinois Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Clay County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 14.8% of commuters leave home, compared with 11.6% across Illinois. Early starts are more common than in Illinois: 18.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.8% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Illinois: 42.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.5% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (26.0%) leave at 9 AM or later, which usually points to shift work, flexible hours or part-time jobs.

When people leave matters as much as how far they go. Rush-hour traffic shrinks how much ground a 20-minute trip covers, so a trade area drawn as a simple circle often takes in neighborhoods that customers or staff would never drive from and misses others that are an easy trip. A drive-time zone, also called an isochrone, outlines every place within a set number of minutes of an address, which makes it the more honest way to size a store's catchment, a hiring area or the commute from a new home.

See it for yourself on the interactive map: click any spot in Clay County, pick a 5, 10, 15 or 30-minute drive and see the local demographics of the people who live within that exact drive time.

Is Clay County Waking Up Earlier? Typical Departure Time, 2009-2024

Each line follows the typical (median) departure time: the moment by which half of commuters have already left home. Higher on the chart means a later start. Setting Clay County next to Illinois and the U.S. shows whether local mornings are drifting earlier or later than everyone else's. The figures span 16 ACS 5-year releases, so changes build up gradually rather than jumping from one year to the next.

• Clay County
• Illinois
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Clay County	Illinois	United States
2009	7:14 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:25 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:23 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:23 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:18 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:24 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:24 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:17 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:18 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:32 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:27 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:27 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:26 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:20 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:18 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Clay County were on the road by 7:18 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (7:14 AM). The shift is sharper than across Illinois, where the typical start moved 1 minute later. Commuters in Clay County now leave 19 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Clay County has moved 12 minutes earlier.

How does Clay County's commute time compare?

Metric	Clay County	Illinois	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	16.9 min	23.6 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	06:00 AM – 06:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	4.4%	15.9%	15.0%
Walked	0.6%	2.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.3%	5.8%	3.2%

The average commute time in Clay County is 16.9 minutes, shorter than the 23.6 minutes in Illinois.

0.3% commute by public transit, lower than the 5.8% in Illinois. 0.6% commute by walking, lower than the 2.8% in Illinois.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau