Commuting times have risen across Australia and are leading people to consider quitting their jobs, according to new data.

Key points: Average commuting times are up in almost every capital city and state

Average commuting times are up in almost every capital city and state Workers in some jobs have almost double the proportion of lengthy commutes

Workers in some jobs have almost double the proportion of lengthy commutes An expert has called for greater funding for public transport

Workers now spend on average 4.5 hours a week getting to and from work — a rise of 23 per cent since 2002 — but this can jump even higher depending on where someone lives and even what job they have.

The data has been compiled in the latest annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which has been running for almost two decades.

Sydneysiders have always fared the worst, closely followed by Melbourne, but both are now being chased down by Brisbane, which has blown out by almost 50 per cent in recent years.

Commuters in the ACT have experienced the biggest surge in commute times, while those in Tasmania are the only ones to have actually seen a decrease.

Everything from population booms, to rising house prices and a lack of investment in public transport is being blamed for the trend.

Todd Denham from RMIT's Centre for Urban Research said infrastructure was not keeping up with population growth, particularly in the outskirts of major cities.

And he said this had been associated with a range of personal issues.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic is the norm for many people. ( ABC News: Taryn Southcombe )

"People have poorer health because they spend more time commuting," he said.

"You are also away from your family for longer periods of time.

"And research connects time spent commuting to higher rates of divorce [and] lower rates of participation in community volunteering."

Mr Denham advocated greater funding for public transport, adding the major projects he saw going ahead were still focused on cars.

"If there was a shift in the way that our politicians were thinking about these issues with congestion, there would be even more investment in rail and public transport rather than roads," he said.

Brisbane local Graham Bingham knows the pain of the peak-hour rush and has seen the effect of urban sprawl.

"The traffic has increased in my area of Brisbane because there have been hundreds of new homes built in this area but the roads cannot cope," he said.

"Over the last 12 months a kilometre-long unofficial third lane has been forming every morning by drivers wanting to get onto the motorway at Belmont in Brisbane."

While some workers might look to public transport as the solution, construction worker Paul warned it was not a stress-free switch.

Does your morning train trip look like this? ( ABC News: Patrick Williams )

His train journey from Melbourne's north into the city takes 50 minutes each way, and he said the afternoon crush could be a nightmare.

"It's how packed the trains get that's the worst," he said.

"Going home, mate if you don't get in and push some old lady over you don't get a seat.

"Driving in it would take maybe half an hour, but that's leaving at 5:00am. Going home it'd take an hour-and-a-half."

Long commutes create unhappy workers

The latest HILDA report is based on 2017 data and includes all workers aged 15 years and older, including those who work from home and have a commuter time of zero.

It found a correlation between longer commute times and a desire to switch jobs, with everything from satisfaction around pay, flexibility and working hours all lower for those who travelled for longer.

Of those with a long commute, 19 per cent had looked for a job in the past month — compared with 15 per cent doing short trips, and 17 per cent with a medium one.

How people rated their work on a scale of 0-10 Short Medium Long Working hours 7.3 7.2 7.1 Flexibility to balance work and non-work commitments 7.6 7.4 7.4 Total pay 7.2 7.2 7.1 Job overall 7.8 7.6 7.4

But it is not just clogged roads and more people that are leading to a rise in travel times.

House prices have surged across the country in the past decade, pushing many workers into the suburbs and beyond as they searched for affordable homes.

In some cases, the simple distance needed to get from home to work has increased, and with it the time spent commuting.

Statistically speaking, a male tradie with two dependent kids is the most likely to have a lengthy commute.

So meet Alex Gray.

The electrician has two young boys and is currently building a family home in the town of Warragul, 100km south-east of Melbourne.

His job often takes him to Melbourne and he estimates he drives about 1,000km every week for work.

"To me it's worthwhile. Having an affordable lifestyle and where we live is more of a priority than living closer to where I need to be," he said.

"The thing for me that we weighed up was living on the fringe of suburbia, I prefer to travel half an hour further on to Warragul and have the lifestyle that we can have in Warragul and the affordability of housing and stuff like that."

Alex Gray has prioritised his family over his own travel time. ( ABC News: Patrick Wood )

The HILDA survey found technicians and trades workers were the most likely to experience long commutes, well ahead of sales workers at the other end of the scale.

Prevalence of different commute lengths, by occupation, 2017 (%) Short Medium Long Managers 49.9 30.4 19.7 Professionals 46.5 33.3 20.2 Technicians and Trades Workers 45.7 31.1 23.2 Community and Personal Service Workers 59 26.1 14.9 Clerical and Administrative Workers 50.8 30 19.2 Sales Workers 67.8 21.9 10.3 Machinery Operators and Drivers 59.4 26.1 14.5 Labourers 61.3 22.5 16.2 Total 52.7 29 18.3

Short = less than one hour a day. Medium = 1-2 hours a day. Long = 2+ hours a day.

Mr Gray said while better public transport might help office workers, it was not the answer for tradies. And the thinking that more people taking trains would ease congestion on the roads did not always stack up.

"In my case it wouldn't help at all," he said.

"There's predominantly two waves of traffic each day, and there will be a time from 5:00am to maybe 7:00am where it will be all trades vehicles. Every one will be a ute.

"And then from 7:00am to 9:00am that will be the office workers.

"So for those trades vehicles I don't see any other way … you need your vehicles, you need your equipment where you're going to be."

On the infrastructure side of things, Mr Denham said the answer was not necessarily to make commutes into the city easier, because this could drain the economy of regional towns.

Instead, he argued, we should make the regions more attractive and have better jobs.

"When you look at the amount of money that's being proposed on spending on fast rail projects there seems to me to be an important question that's not asked, which is how else could we spend that money to develop stronger, more vibrant regional economies that attract people to live there?"