Commuting distance
Part A - Plain language definition
Straight-line distance between a respondent's home and place of work.
Part B - Detailed definition
Refers to the distance, in kilometres, between the respondent's residence and his or her usual workplace location. The variable relates to non-institutional residents 15 years of age and over who worked at some time since January 1, 2005. The variable usually relates to the individual's job held in the week prior to enumeration. However, if the person did not work during that week but had worked at some time since January 1, 2005, the information relates to the job held longest during that period.

The median distance of a specified group of distance units is that distance which divides their distribution into two halves, i.e. the distances of the first half are below the median, while those of the second half are above the median.

The distance is calculated as the straight-line distance between the residential block representative point and the workplace location representative point. For persons who work outside the areas covered by census metropolitan areas or census agglomerations, the workplace location is usually coded to a single representative point for the census subdivision of work. This can affect the calculated commuting distance, particularly when the census subdivision of work has a large area. This is most apparent for members of the labour force who live in smaller, resource-based urban areas and work outside the census metropolitan area or census agglomeration.