Working from Home in the USA.
Originally published in May 2023.
“I haven’t been back to the office since COVID,” has become a commonplace response among US employees when asked about their day-to-day work commute. In 2019, 6% of US employees worked from home (WFH) either part or full-time. According to the US Census Bureau Table S0801: Commuting Characteristics, by 2021, due to the COVID shutdown, the percentage of the US workforce that conducted their usual work from home tripled to 18%.
WFH varies greatly across large cities in the US; for example, in 2021, 35% of workers in San Francisco, CA., were working from home, compared to 16% in Houston, TX. There are many factors that drive such divergence.
As part of our ongoing research into the future of work, we analyzed WFH in the 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States. Below is an example of the Washington DC MSA. This metro area crosses the boundaries of three states and the District of Columbia, and also includes numerous smaller cities. The land area is 7,000 square miles, about 12 times the size of Greater London. We analyzed at this level — instead of the state or city levels – because a MSA is thought of as one distinct labor market, whereas a state can consist of multiple markets.
