7.5 hours of official "work", 30 min lunch break with which you cant do anything, 2x 30 min commute. 9 hours gone! You need to sleep 4.5 hours to be able to do it. 13.5 hours gone! It seems like you would have 10.5 hours for yourself but there of course are the standard chores, shopping, cleaning, cooking, eating, open the mail, pay your bills, interact with friends and family. We are told (cultural) this is all totally recreational!
Can you show up at work at 8:00 sharp? I think more usual is 7:45 to start at 8:00. The 30 min commute means you have to leave at 7:15. The average morning routine is 30 to 90 min. We do this to get to work and getting up at 6:15 is rather unfunny. (Plenty of jobs start at 7:00 or even earlier)
You finish at 16:00 but before you are out of the building 15 min are gone. 16:45 you get home. Why cant I park any place? humm, its 16:55 now. You might need to shower and/or change cloths, oh its 17:30 already? Quick to the store! 2x20 min drive, 10 min strolling around, 10 min to park again. Oh its 18:30? wtf? quick do some cooking. 37 min of cooking 19:07. A short hour to eat 20:00.
And then you have to spend 2 hours not doing anything useful or you wont be fit for work the next day. (note the contradiction in terms) After 5 days of that you also really need to spend the entire weekend relaxing or you eventually wont be able to work. Of course reality wont allow for that so people still burn out.
Slaves? uhm?
Wake up when your body has rested enough. 0-minute commute. No dead time where you fake-work or time where you are not working anymore but can't yet do personal projects. In fact it's sometimes the other way around: you can multiplex activities by doing chores without breaking your work-related train of thought (I have solved multiple bugs while hanging clothes on the drier rack). When you are done with your task (even if it took less time than anticipated) it's a 0-minute context-switch to your personal life. No social pressure to eat at specific hours (much easier if you are into intermittent fasting for example).
Edit: I am not sure how you got to 1/5th. By my calculation of the waking hours in a week 37.5hrs is ~1/3rd of 112hrs.
Doesn't help that rent in my metro area ain't cheap but I was able to score a relatively cheap apartment that makes my commute 35-40 mins each way. I suppose since I work remote I'm not getting my money's worth but this is still a better way for me to live.
My dad did this commute for around 11 years, got laid off, got a job a half hour drive away and his QoL is drastically improved. If housing were more accessible where jobs were (or if public infrastructure was improved to drastically increase throughput/efficiency) we would probably be much happier- we'd probably be even happier if we just bit the bullet and went as remote as possible or chose 4 day workweeks, and to be quite honest it's probably easier at a macro level to force that kind of change than to figure out a way to fit more sardines into electric cars in tubes.
Yes but average is lower. First Google hit:
Value for the US (Minutes): 26.6:
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/a...
https://news.sky.com/story/average-commute-to-work-now-takes...
A 2-hour one-way commute just seems crazy to me, I know it exists but I think it's very extreme.
divided by
365 days times 24 hours.
Averaged over the year standard work hours in my country, 37.5h/week, is less than 1/5 of your time.