COVID-19 triggered a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). Americans, for example, supplied roughly half of paid work hours from home between April and December 2020, as compared to 5 percent before the pandemic. Will this phenomenon continue after the pandemic ends?
To answer this question and to gauge other post-pandemic effects, the authors employed multiple waves of data from an original cross-sectional survey design that they have fielded about once a month since May 2020, and which includes 27,500 responses from working-age Americans. Their findings include the following:
These shifts in work patterns will have important consequences. For example, high-income workers, especially, will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work. Also, spending in major city centers will fall by 5-10 percent or more relative to pre-pandemic levels. Finally, the authors’ data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 6 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Less than one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture gains from less commuting.