Measuring the Ins and Outs of Remote Work: New Evidence from the Gallup Workplace Panel

Remote and hybrid work remain central features of the post-pandemic labor market, yet macro-labor evidence on their dynamics is limited by a lack of longitudinal data on individual work arrangements. This paper uses the Gallup Workplace Panel, a nationally representative worker panel over 2019 to 2025, to measure worker-level flows across on-site, hybrid, and fully remote work. I estimate multi-state transition matrices and document three main patterns: substantial persistence in both on-site and fully remote arrangements; comparatively higher churn in hybrid status, which often serves as a transitional state; and meaningful heterogeneity in transitions by industry and worker characteristics. I further decompose work-arrangement changes into within-employer adjustments versus transitions that coincide with job changes, showing that both margins contribute to aggregate dynamics. These transition objects provide new calibration targets for amenity-based search-and-matching models in which remote work is a valued job attribute, helping to discipline the valuation of flexibility, the magnitude of switching costs, and whether remote work should be modeled primarily as a job type or as an adjustable within-match contract margin.