I’m a super-commuter hairstylist — I fly over 600 miles to NYC for work at a salon and I don’t mind it
She’s literally hair today, gone tomorrow.
But such is life when you’re a super-commuting cosmetologist, routinely traveling from North Carolina to New York City to transform Big Apple tresses.
“I moved to Charlotte to be closer to boyfriend and enjoy a slower pace of life,” Upper West Side hairdresser Kaitlin Jay, 30, told The Post. “But I didn’t want to leave the city and my clients for good.”
The redhead ditched the concrete jungle for countryside living in April 2023. She’s since made the trek back to Manhattan on a biweekly basis, spending just under $1,000 a month on flights, ground transportation and renting a room from a friend.
“It’s cheaper than renting my own apartment on the Upper West Side,” said Kaitlin — who gave TikTok audiences a viral glimpse at her workday, which begins at 5:30 a.m. and ends just after 9:00 p.m.
“I only work six days a month in the city and four days a month at a salon in Charlotte,” she added. “I nap on the plane traveling both ways, and I have a lot of personal time between trips.”
“I’m coming out ahead.”
The jet-setting stylist is one of the over 3 million breadwinners hopping planes, trains and buses for their out-of-state posts.
And while a mile-high work-life might seem both costly and time-consuming to the uninitiated, 9-to-5ers making it happen are happily going for broke.
Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter spent most of 2022 taking the three-hour journey from Columbus, Ohio to NYC’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to fulfill his job’s three-days-a-week return to office mandate.
At the time, the writer, who worked remotely from his suburban hometown during the pandemic, figured his routine excursions would be cheaper than leasing a pricey NYC apartment amid the city’s rent inflation crisis.
“I thought I could keep my expenses — rent in Ohio, plus travel costs — at or below the price of a nice New York studio, or roughly $3,200 a month,” said Cutter, who ultimately blew his budget hustling and bustling.
But native New Yorker Susan Miller, professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, says her friendly skies commute to the Midwest has been a breeze.
In fact, the educator quipped that her weekly, two-hour journey to the lecture hall is often shorter than a mass transit trip within her home state.
“I sometimes joke that it takes me fewer hours to get from my NYC apartment to Ann Arbor, Michigan, than going on the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan for the 23 years I worked there,” Miller teased Business Insider.
Shuffling back and forth doesn’t to bother Kaitlin either.
To make her Wednesday through Friday shifts in Gotham, the pro coiffure wakes up to a blaring alarm at 5:30 a.m. for a 7:15 a.m. flight, which can cost between $200 to $300 depending on the season, into LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY.
After catching some Zs while en route, Kaitlin lands in Queens, where she catches a bus to the subway which brings her to a stop near the Scott J Aveda salon.
The beautician then beautifies her face before coloring, curling and chopping the locks of 10 to 15 clients at over $100 a head until 9:00 p.m. each evening.
Online, stunned stans applauded Kaitlin for her tireless efforts.
But she tells The Post it’s all in a hard day’s work.
“I love what I do in New York and I love life in Charlotte,” said Kaitlin. “I get the best of both worlds.
