Most Americans do not work in city center and can avoid driving the super congested trips into downtown. And most job growth in the US over the past years has been eds and meds, which are more dispersed and local.
> Most Americans do not work in city center and can avoid driving the super congested trips into downtown
They often can't avoid very congested trips to the neighboring suburb where their job is located. Even if many jobs aren't located downtown, they are located in suburban industrial or office clusters that severely lack in public transit, and are subject to severe traffic congestion.
Furthermore, the effect of this increasing dispersal of jobs has been to increase average commute times, not decrease them [1].
Anecdotally, over my career, I've experienced this sort of long suburb-to-suburb commute in states as varied as Michigan, Texas, Washington and California.
Even in engineering/tech, most people are probably commuting from suburban houses/apartments to suburban office parks. And while that can still involve congested traffic, most people would consider an hour each way a pretty long commute.
