30% of working residents now work from home. 10% drive alone. The pandemic reshuffled the commute, and the new order appears to be holding.
Recent Census data show that Hunters Point South and Long Island City have a Work From Home share almost double that of NYC as a whole. In 2020, 1,569 residents worked from home. In 2024, 6,240 did. The share of workers driving alone to work stayed at 10%. Nearly one in three employed residents now starts and ends the workday without leaving the neighborhood (or maybe even their building).
The subway still carries 53% of commuters. But the commuters who stopped riding didn’t get into cars. They stayed home.
Source: ACS 5-Year Estimates, B08301 (means of transportation to work). Waterfront = Tracts 1.01–1.02; Core Hunters Point = Tracts 7.01–7.02; Court Square = Tracts 19.01–19.03. Figures for 2010–2019 use 2010 census tract boundaries (tracts 1, 7, 19 undivided); 2020–2024 use 2020 sub-tract boundaries aggregated to tract family. Note: Court Square and Waterfront had small worker populations 2010–2013; pre-2020 estimates less reliable in those years. Queens and NYC from borough-level ACS estimates.
Hunters Point South Zone Map
More from the ledger
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CB2 gained 2,141 street trees over 20 years but it depends on which block you’re on.
A years-long city planning process is about to reshape the streets around Court Square.
Hunters Point South leads the city in WFH
The WFH share has been roughly stable since 2022: 27% in 2022, and 30% in 2023 and 2024. The initial surge appears to have settled into a new baseline of about 30% of our workforce. Whether hybrid and return-to-office pressures shift that figure in coming years is a question the next several rounds of ACS data will answer.
Working from home requires a job that can be done remotely: professional, managerial, knowledge-economy roles. This is a neighborhood where 85% of adults hold a college degree and 40% hold a graduate degree. The residents who moved in before the pandemic, before remote work was normalized, already held the kinds of jobs that would make home-based work possible. The pandemic accelerated a shift the occupational profile of this neighborhood was already set up to absorb.
What happened to transit
Transit commuting fell from 75% of workers in 2020 to 53% in 2024. The share of residents driving alone held steady at around 10% across the same period. The commuters who stopped taking the subway did not get into cars. They stayed home.
Read more about how we get about hps & lic
9 in 10 Residents Don’t Drive Alone to Work. That Was True Before the Towers Came.
editorial
Our take
Our leaders at the City and State level have not fully recognized the durable nature of WFH in HPS.
Street & transit design
Street design, transit service levels, retail zoning, park programming, school seat projections are still designed for a population that leaves in the morning and returns at night. A neighborhood where a third of workers are home all day generates different demand. More sustained foot traffic. More pressure on parks and open space during off-peak hours. More need for ground-floor retail that serves people throughout the day, not just at 8am and 6pm.
Subway and bus service based on where people live and where they work continues to be based on an older model. When 6,000 residents stop generating subway trips, that’s a gap between the model and reality. HPS/LIC makes it visible because the numbers are so concentrated and the neighborhood so new, but the pattern is spreading across the city.
Shifting commercial
The economics of ground-floor commercial space are shifting too. The businesses that survive here serve people who are around all day: coffee shops, lunch spots, dry cleaners, neighborhood services. The ones built around commuter peaks — grab-and-go breakfast, late-night delivery — are competing for a different customer than the one who actually lives here.
A neighborhood this educated, this well-compensated, and this likely to stay home creates a daytime economy that didn’t exist five years ago. The infrastructure question is whether the city and state notices before the mismatch becomes a problem.
Data
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2010–2024. Means of transportation to work (B08301). Waterfront = Tracts 1.01–1.02; Core Hunters Point = Tracts 7.01–7.02; Court Square = Tracts 19.01–19.03. Figures for 2010–2019 use 2010 census tract boundaries (tracts 1, 7, 19 undivided); 2020–2024 use 2020 sub-tract boundaries aggregated to tract family. Queens and NYC from borough-level ACS estimates.
