Who works from home in 2022?

Remote work remains elevated since before the pandemic, but its popularity might be fading

Nov 16, 2022

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, economists have debated the impact of the increase in remote work. Would remote work continue to be popular? And if so, how would it change labor markets or local economies? In May of 2020, 41 percent of employed people were working from home, up from just 5 percent in 20191. But by September 2022, this percent had fallen to just 10 percent, and could still be falling.

Chart showing work-from-home rates over time. Rate began at 41% in May 2020, when the data was first collected, and declined to about 10% in September 2022. About 5% are assumed to be working from home originally, based on 2019 estimates.

Remote work didn’t increase uniformly for all workers during the pandemic. Workers with more years of education teleworked at much higher rates. Rates of working from home peaked at 76 percent for workers with a graduate degree, and 61 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree. For those with a high school education or less, only 16 percent worked from home during the pandemic’s peak. By September, rates of working from home had fallen substantially. Just 18 percent of those with a graduate degree and 16 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree still work from home. This is still a substantial increase from the pre-pandemic work-from-home rate of 7 percent for college graduates. Of workers at or below the high school level, only 5 percent work from home—close to the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5 percent.

Chart showing teleworking rates by education level in May 2020 and September 2022. Rates are highest for college graduates in May 2020 (76% for advanced degrees, 61% for bachelor's degrees, compared to 16% for high school or less). In September these fell to 18% for advanced degrees, 16% for bachelor's degrees, and 5% for high school or less.

Breaking down work-from-home rates by industry gives a fuller picture of how remote work has evolved throughout the pandemic. The rate of working from home was highest in the education industry, at 79 percent in May of 2020. But this high rate has not persisted, as both schools at all levels—K-12 and post-secondary institutions—prioritized a return to in-person learning in 2022. Only 8% of workers in the education industry still work from home in September 2022.

Three industries where working from home reached high levels during the pandemic, and have remained well above pre-pandemic rates, are professional, scientific, and technical services; finance and insurance; and business services. These industries peaked at around 70 percent working from home, and rates remain around 22 to 26 percent in recent months. These were already industries with the highest work-from-home rates in 2019.

Chart showing telework rates by industry in May 2020 and September 2022. For education, the rate was 79% in 2020 and 8% in 2022. For professional and business services and finance and insurance, the rates were around 70% and have fallen to around 24%.

But perhaps if working from home is more popular among younger workers, it will catch on over time? Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. While telecommuting due to the pandemic was slightly more common among 35- to 44-year-olds, current rates of working from home are level from age 25 to 64, at 11 percent.

Chart showing telework rates by age. Rates were around 43% in May 2020, and 11% in September 2022, regardless of age.

I should note that the way these estimates are constructed shouldn’t be expected to produce exact estimates. I am simply adding the estimate of teleworking due to the pandemic from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to the work-from-home estimate from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS). This might be inaccurate, especially early in the pandemic when there was considerable unemployment. There is also a risk of underestimating working from home if workers no longer attribute their working from home in 2022 to COVID-19. On the other hand, there is a risk of overestimating work-from-home jobs if people attribute them to COVID-19 in cases where they would have existed anyway. According the the 2021 ACS estimates, the overall work-from-home estimate was 18 percent. This is slightly lower than the 2019 ACS estimate plus the CPS estimate of teleworking for 2021 (21 percent). This suggests that this method is reasonably accurate, and might even overestimate working from home.

This estimate comes from the percent of workers working from home in 2019 from the American Community Survey (ACS), plus the percent of workers who said they were teleworking due to the pandemic as measured by the Current Population Survey (CPS).

David Waldron

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