Beyond lockdowns: working from home and mental health across three phases of the pandemic

During and shortly after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns were expressed that working from home (WFH) was creating a 'mental health crisis'. Australia experienced a three-phase 'WFH experiment', with widespread high-intensity WFH imposed by lockdowns in 2020, deepened restrictions in 2021, and a transition to flexible work arrangements and more autonomy in 2022 as vaccination rates increased. Using eight waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey and a within-person event-study specification with 2019 as the reference year, this study estimates how the relationship between WFH and self-reported worker mental health varied across these three phases. The findings show that WFH was associated with a modest, statistically significant deterioration in average worker mental health during the lockdown years (2020-2021), particularly among women. By 2022, the negative associations were no longer detectable on average, with a positive mental health association for workers WFH 25-50% of the time. This pattern is consistent with the lockdown-period results reflecting the broader conditions under which WFH occurred, rather than WFH itself. The main exception is workers with low job control, who continued to show a negative relationship between WFH and mental health in 2022. The findings point to job autonomy as a potentially important margin for designing sustainable hybrid work arrangements.