As employers continue to grapple with remote work, some trends are becoming clearer
May 16, 2024 - Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Haley Chinander, Writer/Analyst
The surge in remote work ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to shape where and how many Americans now work. Vaccines are widely available and pandemic-era restrictions have been lifted. Still, people are working from home significantly more than they did before 2020.
But remote work is hardly a settled matter. Many companies want employees back in the office. Employees, for their part, are often pushing back. As a result, remote work continues to evolve, differing markedly in its presence and intensity across states.
“It feels like remote work is toothpaste that you can’t just push back into the tube,” said Cameron Macht, a regional analyst with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). “Workers have experienced it and now they like it. It seems like it will be hard to go backward.”
Various surveys have attempted to capture how often people work from home. Two of these efforts include the Census Bureau’s longstanding American Community Survey and the bureau’s more recent Household Pulse Survey.
The American Community Survey shows that remote work had been slowly increasing in the United States before 2020.1 The share of workers who worked primarily from home rose from 4 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2019.
With the onset of the pandemic, many workers were sent home to help prevent the spread of the virus. Unemployment skyrocketed for workers whose jobs required an in-person presence, but a subset of the workforce found that they could conduct most of their job responsibilities from home. Remote work was able to quickly ramp up for these workers, and the share of remote workers in the U.S. tripled to 18 percent by 2021.2
Remote work became more popular across states in the Federal Reserve’s Ninth District as well, but there was considerable variation. Minnesota’s share of remote workers spiked to 21 percent, higher than the national share, while North Dakota’s share more than doubled in 2021 but remained under 10 percent (see Figure 1).
The rapid transition to remote work caused many business leaders to realize “how easy it is for certain jobs to be done from anywhere, so an attitude shift happened,” said Macht. “Their perceptions on remote work definitely changed.”
As the pandemic evolved, remote work did too. The share of remote workers fell modestly in 2022 as some workers returned to the office. But many kept working from home occasionally.
“We are definitely hearing that more employers are now pushing for at least some time in the office,” said Macht. “But there are many employers who still offer the ability to telework, not necessarily fully remote, as a significant benefit to try and attract job seekers.”
Many businesses have since adopted policies that allow for hybrid schedules, which give workers a mix of remote days and in-office days.
While the American Community Survey does not ask about hybrid work, the Census Bureau developed the Household Pulse Survey in 2020 to measure the many impacts of the pandemic, including the number of days people worked from home.
This newer survey estimates that 29 percent of U.S. workers worked from home at least part of the week in 2023.3 In the Ninth District, Minnesota had one of the higher shares of remote workers in the country at 34 percent. Neighboring North Dakota had one of the lower shares at 16 percent (see Figure 2).
There is a relatively even split between respondents who worked the entire week from home and those who worked one to four days remotely (see Figure 3). Many respondents who spent just part of the week at home may have hybrid schedules and go to an office on the remaining days.4 Across both the nation and district states, the share of these partially remote workers was within 1–2 percentage points of those working fully remote.
The prevalence of respondents working only part of the week at home likely reflects a fine line firms have been trying to walk between getting workers back to the office and allowing flexibility.
“The many senior managers that I've talked to fundamentally believe that in-person interactions are very important for collaboration and that’s what’s best for the business,” explained Myles Shaver, a professor of strategic management and entrepreneurship at the University of Minnesota. “But they have to balance that if there’s going to be a subsequent cost of a lot of turnover.”
Part of that balancing act is determining the number of days workers must come into the office. The Household Pulse Survey shows that many partially remote workers likely spent more time working at the office than at home during the work week (see Figure 4).
The number of days at home also varied by state. In the Ninth District, Minnesota had a more generous remote work environment with 40 percent of partially remote employees working from home three to four days a week instead of one to two days. The share was 27 percent in North and South Dakota.
Employers must also consider if workers should choose their office days. This provides greater flexibility for workers but can also result in only one or two employees being in the office on a given day, negating the point of in-person collaboration.
As a solution, some companies are taking a more rigid approach to the hybrid schedule, according to Colleen Flaherty Manchester, a professor in the Department of Work and Organizations at the University of Minnesota.
“Companies are creating anchor days, where they set specific days that everyone must be in,” said Flaherty Manchester. “They seem to be trying to hit the sweet spot between flexibility and the serendipity of in-person connections.”
That sweet spot continues to be a moving target, but it appears that hybrid schedules have emerged as a popular path forward.
1 Estimates were calculated using U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 1-year estimates from IPUMS USA. The total number of employed respondents includes respondents 16 years or older who worked for pay in the last week at the time the survey was conducted (“1” in the EMPSTAT variable). Anyone who responded that they worked from home instead of commuting to work in the last seven days (“80” in the TRANWORK variable) was classified as a remote worker. All estimates were calculated using the person weights variable (PERWT).
2 The 2020 American Community Survey 1-year estimates have been labeled as experimental due to data collection issues resulting from the pandemic. For this reason, 2020 data is omitted from this analysis.
3 Estimates were calculated using public-use microdata from weeks 52 to 63 of the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey. The total number of employed respondents includes those aged 18 years or older who worked for pay or profit in the last seven days at the time the survey was conducted (“1” in the ANYWORK variable). Anyone who responded that they worked at home at least one day in the last seven days (“1”,”2”,”3” on the TWDAYS_RESP variable) was classified as a remote worker. Those who responded that they worked five or more days from home (“3” on the TWDAYS_RESP variable) were classified as “fully remote” workers. Those who marked that they worked between one to two days from home (“1” on the TWDAYS_RESP variable) or three to four days from home (“2” on the TWDAYS_RESP variable) were classified as partially remote workers. All estimates were calculated using the person weights variable (PWEIGHT).
4 The Household Pulse Survey does not differentiate between full- and part-time employment. Part-time employed respondents who report working from home one to four days a week might not go into an office. However, full-time employees make up roughly 80 percent of the U.S. workforce, so many respondents may be full-time workers.
