People Want Working from Home to Stick after the Pandemic Subsides

With widespread lockdowns abruptly forcing businesses to halt nonessential, in-person activity, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a mass social experiment in working from home, according to Jose Maria Barrero of the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom, and Chicago Booth’s Steven J. Davis. The researchers launched a survey of US workers, starting in May 2020 and continuing in waves for more than a year since, to capture a range of information including workers’ attitudes about their new remote arrangements. The survey results suggest not only that people’s perceptions of working from home have exceeded their expectations, but also that they would like to continue doing it after the pandemic ends—even more frequently than their employers are planning. These charts offer snapshots of people’s time spent working from home in the United States during the pandemic, their impressions of the experience, and their postpandemic outlook.