Today’s Westwood One blog highlights new results from Nielsen of a just-completed national consumer study of 1,000 respondents that was conducted October 1-5. This is fourth in a series of studies that have tracked the pandemic’s impact on consumer movement, spending, attitudes, and media usage. The prior studies were conducted in April, May, and June of this year.
Commuting surge: There is a +56% increase in the number of Americans working outside the home. Nielsen reports 61% of U.S. workers are now commuting to their workplace, up from 39% in early May.The number of at-home workers is down -55%. As of early October, Nielsen finds 19% of those employed are working at home, down from 42% in May.Dallas Federal Reserve: In September, 69% of U.S. workers commuted to work and 20% worked from home.
Validating Nielsen’s findings is a just-released national commuting study from the Dallas Federal Reserve. As of September 2020, 69% of those who were employed pre-pandemic were commuting to work. 20% were working from home and 11% were not employed.Half of American schoolchildren are driven to school with AM/FM radio playing in the car. 50% say their children are driven to school (3% carpool, 47% parent/family member). 44% of American schoolchildren are taking the bus. 62% indicate that AM/FM radio is always on, and 35% say AM/FM radio is sometimes on in the car.AM/FM radio’s audience recovery, and time spent in the car is powered by commuting increases and a return to school. From May to October, Nielsen finds daily time spent in the car has grown +81% from 36 minutes in May to 65 minutes in October.
Among heavy AM/FM radio listeners, daily time spent in the car has doubled from an hour and six minutes a day to two hours and eleven minutes.AM/FM radio is the soundtrack of the American economic recovery. Across 29 purchase categories, heavy AM/FM radio listeners show stronger purchase intentions compared to heavy TV viewers.The economy will affect holiday shopping, but AM/FM radio listeners will spend more than the average. A greater proportion of heavy AM/FM radio listeners say they will spend more this holiday (14%) versus heavy TV viewers (10%) and the overall market (10%).