IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/33383.html

Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?

Author

Listed:
  • Zoë Cullen
  • Bobak Pakzad-Hurson
  • Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Abstract

We estimate the value employees place on remote work using revealed preferences in a high-stakes, real-world context, focusing on U.S. tech workers. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles. Our estimates are three to five times that of previous studies. We attribute this discrepancy partly to methodological differences, suggesting that existing methods may understate preferences for remote work. Because of the strong preference for remote work, we expected to find a compensating wage differential, with remote positions offering lower compensation than otherwise identical in-person positions. However, using novel data on salaries for tech jobs, we reject that hypothesis. We propose potential explanations for this puzzle, including optimization frictions and worker sorting.

Suggested Citation

  • Zoë Cullen & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson & Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2025. "Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?," NBER Working Papers 33383, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33383
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w33383.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. F. Cerina & L. Deidda & S. Nobili, 2025. "Skill-biased remote work and incentives," Working Paper CRENoS 202505, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    2. Lambert, Peter John & Schindler, Yannick, 2026. "The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 808, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Bick, Alexander & Blandin, Adam & Mertens, Karel & Rubinton, Hannah, 2024. "Work from Home and Migration," CEPR Discussion Papers 19101, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    4. Arenas, Andreu & Bosch, Marc & Frias, Nerea, 2026. "WFH and Productivity: Evidence from the Judiciary," IZA Discussion Papers 18795, IZA Network @ LISER.
    5. Lambert, Peter John & Schindler, Yannick, 2026. "The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1615, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    6. Brad Hershbein & Katherine Lim & Douglas A. Webber & Mike Zabek, 2026. "Local Labor Market Tightness and Job Quality: Evidence from Job Changers," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2026-043, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Simon Cordes & Max Müller, 2026. "Do Firms Know What Workers Want?," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_739, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    8. Peter John Lambert & Yannick Schindler, 2026. "The broken ladder: AI, remote work, and early-career hiring," CEP Discussion Papers dp2193, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Jason Sockin & Pawel Adrjan & Mária Balgová & Simon Jäger & Jonas Jessen, 2026. "Job Ads as Signals: Evidence from a Priced Amenity and Worker Beliefs," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26184, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    10. Collis, Manuela R. & Van Effenterre, Clémentine, 2025. "Workplace Hostility," IZA Discussion Papers 18302, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. Peter John Lambert & Yannick Schindler, 2026. "The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26228, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    12. Jan Bietenbeck & Natalie Irmert & Therese Nilsson, 2026. "Individualism and working from home," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 64(2), pages 491-507, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

    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:nbr:nberwo:33383. 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: 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.