IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32363.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Big Shift in Working Arrangements: Eight Ways Unusual

Author

Listed:
  • Steven J. Davis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic instigated a big shift in working arrangements. I first describe the scale of this shift in the United States, drawing on the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes and other sources. I then review differences, circa 2023, in work-from-home rates across industries, demographic groups, and countries. The big shift had surprisingly benign (or even positive) effects on productivity, which is one reason it has endured. Compared to other shocks that strike modern economies, the big shift is also unusual in other respects: It relaxes time budget constraints, improves flexibility in time use, enhances individual autonomy, relaxes locational constraints, drives a major re-sorting of workers to jobs and employers, and alters the structure of wages. The big shift also reduces wage-growth pressures during the transition to new working arrangements and life styles. The shift benefits workers, on average, even as it lowers non-labor costs and real product wages for firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven J. Davis, 2024. "The Big Shift in Working Arrangements: Eight Ways Unusual," NBER Working Papers 32363, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32363
    Note: EFG LS PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32363.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bloom, Nicholas & Davis, Steven J. & Hansen, Stephen & Lambert, Peter John & Sadun, Raffaella & Taska, Bledi, 2023. "Remote work across jobs, companies and space," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121302, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Barrero, José María & Bloom, Nicholas & Davis, Steven J. & Meyer, Brent & Mihaylov, Emil, 2022. "The Shift to Remote Work Lessens Wage-Growth Pressures," IZA Discussion Papers 15385, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Shaun Larcom & Ferdinand Rauch & Tim Willems, 2017. "The Benefits of Forced Experimentation: Striking Evidence from the London Underground Network," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 2019-2055.
    4. José María Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "The Evolution of Work from Home," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 23-50, Fall.
    5. Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Yulia Zhestkova, 2021. "COVID-19 Shifted Patent Applications toward Technologies That Support Working from Home," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 263-266, May.
    6. David Autor & Arindrajit Dube & Annie McGrew, 2023. "The Unexpected Compression: Competition at Work in the Low Wage Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 31010, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burdett, Ashley & Etheridge, Ben & Tang, Li & Wang, Yikai, 2024. "Worker productivity during Covid-19 and adaptation to working from home," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    2. Ketter, Laura & Morris, Todd & Yu, Lizi, 2025. "A New Equilibrium: COVID-19 Lockdowns and WFH Persistence," IZA Discussion Papers 17975, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Laura Ketter & Todd Morris & Lizi Yu, 2025. "A new equilibrium: COVID-19 lockdowns and WFH persistence," Papers 2506.16671, arXiv.org.
    4. José María Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "The Evolution of Work from Home," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 23-50, Fall.
    5. Alessandra Fenizia & Tom Kirchmaier, 2024. "Not incentivized yet efficient: Working from home in the public sector," CEP Discussion Papers dp2036, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. Barrero, Jose Maria & Bloom, Nick & Davis, Steven J., 2020. "Why Working From Home Will Stick," SocArXiv wfdbe, Center for Open Science.
    7. Pablo Zarate & Mathias Dolls & Steven J. Davis & Nicholas Bloom & Jose Maria Barrero & Cevat Giray Aksoy, 2024. "Why Does Working from Home Vary across Countries and People?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11081, CESifo.
    8. Cevat Giray Aksoy & Jose Maria Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Mathias Dolls & Pablo Zarate, 2022. "Working from Home Around the World," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 53(2 (Fall)), pages 281-360.
    9. Alexander Bick & Adam Blandin & Aidan Caplan & Tristan Caplan, 2025. "Measuring Trends in Work from Home: Evidence from Six U.S. Datasets," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 107(15), pages 1-23, October.
    10. Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia & Victoria Vernon, 2025. "Remote work, wages, and hours worked in the United States," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-49, March.
    11. Nicholas Bloom & Gordon B. Dahl & Dan-Olof Rooth, 2024. "Work from Home and Disability Employment," NBER Working Papers 32943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. repec:osf:socarx:wfdbe_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Mathieu P.A. Steijn, 2024. "The persistence and nature of the labor reallocation shock during the COVID-19 crisis," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 24-047/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Isabella Di Filippo & Bruno Escobar & Juan Facal, 2025. "Remote Work and Women's Labor Supply: The New Gender Division at Home," Papers 2508.08184, arXiv.org.
    15. S. Nobili & L.G. Deidda & F. Cerina, 2025. "Skill-biased remote work and incentives," Working Paper CRENoS 202505, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    16. Masayuki Morikawa, 2024. "Productivity dynamics of work from home: Firm-level evidence from Japan," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 465-487, April.
    17. Cristea, Anca D. & Miromanova, Anna, 2025. "Telecommuting and the recovery of passenger aviation post-COVID-19," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    18. Goulas, Sofoklis, 2025. "The Value of Remote Work: A Correspondence Experiment on Tutors," IZA Discussion Papers 17592, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Beestermöller, Matthias, 2017. "Striking Evidence? Demand Persistence for Inter-City Buses from German Railway Strikes," Discussion Papers in Economics 31768, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    20. Ralf Martin & Sam Unsworth & Anna Valero & Dennis Verhoeven, 2020. "Innovation for a strong and sustainable recovery," CEP Covid-19 Analyses cepcovid-19-014, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    21. Martín Almuzara & Richard Audoly & Davide Melcangi, 2025. "A Measure of Trend Wage Inflation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 508-520, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:nbr:nberwo:32363. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.