IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2210.00067.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Telecommuting in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Deborah Salon

    (Kouros)

  • Laura Mirtich

    (Kouros)

  • Matthew Wigginton Bhagat-Conway

    (Kouros)

  • Adam Costello

    (Kouros)

  • Ehsan Rahimi

    (Kouros)

  • Abolfazl

    (Kouros)

  • Mohammadian
  • Rishabh Singh Chauhan
  • Sybil Derrible
  • Denise da Silva Baker
  • Ram M. Pendyala

Abstract

This study focuses on an important transport-related long-term effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: an increase in telecommuting. Analyzing a nationally representative panel survey of adults, we find that 40-50% of workers expect to telecommute at least a few times per month post-pandemic, up from 24% pre-COVID. If given the option, 90-95% of those who first telecommuted during the pandemic plan to continue the practice regularly. We also find that new telecommuters are demographically similar to pre-COVID telecommuters. Both pre- and post-COVID, higher educational attainment and income, together with certain job categories, largely determine whether workers have the option to telecommute. Despite growth in telecommuting, approximately half of workers expect to remain unable to telecommute and between 2/3 and 3/4 of workers expect their post-pandemic telecommuting patterns to be unchanged from their pre-COVID patterns. This limits the contribution telecommuting can make to reducing peak hour transport demand.

Suggested Citation

  • Deborah Salon & Laura Mirtich & Matthew Wigginton Bhagat-Conway & Adam Costello & Ehsan Rahimi & Abolfazl & Mohammadian & Rishabh Singh Chauhan & Sybil Derrible & Denise da Silva Baker & Ram M. Pendya, 2022. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Telecommuting in the United States," Papers 2210.00067, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.00067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.00067
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.00067. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.