Can Older Workers Work from Home?

A major issue concerning the COVID-19 pandemic is how it will affect future employment options for older workers. Public health officials have made it clear that older people are more at risk of complications from the virus, meaning they may be the last to return to work. Therefore, their ability to survive financially will depend on their ability to work from home. So, the question becomes how many older workers can work from home. This brief builds on recent research that identified occupations that can be done remotely. The new analysis links these jobs to a dataset of individual workers to examine any differences by age, earnings, education, and gender. The somewhat surprising result is that roughly the same percentage of older and younger adults can work from home. The ability to work from home, however, does depend on education, which means that it is highly correlated with earnings. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section describes the recent study used here as a basis for identifying occupations where working at home is a possibility. The second section presents the results by age and earnings by linking the occupations with the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The findings show that about 45 percent of older workers are in occupations with the ability to work remotely and that this ability is strongly correlated with earnings. The third section discusses further results by earnings, education, and gender. The final section concludes that the findings are a good news/bad news story for older workers. The good news is that they are as well situated as younger workers in terms of occupations that allow remote work. The bad news is that only about 45 percent of older workers are in such occupations. Thus, as the economy opens up, the other 55 percent, who cannot work from home and tend to be lower paid, will face either health risks Ð returning to work before the virus is under control Ð or economic risks Ð delaying work until the environment is safe, which may exhaust their resources.