The COVID-19 pandemic altered many aspects of life, including work. Teleworking expanded to multiple industries, decreasing the number of people commuting and the daytime populations of metropolitan areas across the country. Capitals like Albany and Hartford struggled to adapt to changing vehicle and foot traffic patterns. Using information collected by the U.S. Census Bureau after the onset of the pandemic, a data brief from the Rockefeller Institute of Government aims to predict how remote work will impact the economy and city planning going forward.
WAMC's Jim Levulis spoke with the brief’s author, Future of Labor Research Center Fellow Liz Farmer. They started by discussing the data collected by the Census Bureau.
Farmer: Yeah, it's called the Household Pulse Survey. And they launched it in the early months, I want to say April of 2020, during the pandemic, and it was largely a data-driven effort to gather and crunch as much data about what was going on with, with workers and people's movements, and basically how the pandemic is affecting their lives. And then to be able to put that data out there for policymakers, for researchers, as much in real time as was as possible. The Household Pulse Survey, I've seen it cited, you know, a bunch of times, it has been extremely, extremely useful for those who want to track how the pandemic has changed our lives, and how much of that, you know, change is going to stay. So, they added a question on telework starting in August of 2020. So that's when the data that we have at the Rockefeller Institute begins. And it goes, you know, pretty much until mid this year, until August of 2022, which is the latest form of data we have. There is one difference, about a year in or the spring of 2021, the wording on the telework question changed slightly. And so in effect, it generally means you can still compare across the whole timeline, but you just have to be aware that that did have an impact on you know, kind of a little bit artificially heightening maybe the telework question in the beginning and then lowering it after April of 2021. So you do see this drop kind of across the board in April of 2021, in telework, and some of it is due to that question wording change, and some of it's due to you know, we had vaccines and people were getting out again.
Levulis: I want to get to the change in the telework rate from before the pandemic, to that latest data point that you cited in your brief, August 2022. What was the change in the rate of telework?
Farmer: Okay, I can answer that looking at the average of the 15 largest metropolitan areas in the study, because that is generally where telework is concentrated. So prior to the pandemic, about a little over 5% of people reported teleworking, and just to be clear by teleworking, that could mean anything from you know, full-time working remotely from home every single day, to working from home, one day a week, two days a month. So, you know, that definition varies, but it was about 5% before the pandemic. By August of 2020, when we started collecting data, it was over a third of people were teleworking and that actually climbed up to a little bit higher in the fall of 2020, it was closer to 40% in the major cities, because as we know that the virus was running rampant at that point. Then it starts going back down again. So currently in the 15 cities as of August of 2022, the average rate of telework is just under 30%.
Levulis: And I want to get to some of the variations that you detailed in your brief, how did the telework rates vary by annual income?
Farmer: So, income status or income bracket is almost a proxy for access to telework, as we found in the data. So around the beginning of the pandemic, households who earned $100,000 annually or more, we're reporting telework at rates of anywhere from 60 to even 65% in the first, I'd say six months of the pandemic, that kind of trickles down a bit. And currently, it's around still like just under 60%. And, when you look at that in a graph, compared with the other income brackets of $ 50,000 to just under $100,000, to $25,000 to $50,000 and then under $25,000, it is literally like looking at a cross section of strata, you know, Earth strata, and looking at the different layers, because there's a huge gap between the $100,000 bracket, and everybody else. Households that earn between $50,000, and just in like, under $100,000, they were teleworking around 35%, sometimes 40% in the early months of the pandemic. Now, that's around 30%. The other income brackets if the household earns less than $50,00, annually, they're teleworking at rates of 15% 20%, maybe, generally around 12%. So it's much, much lower, and that $100,000 income bracket is just again, you know, it's the people who earn that much money, more money are more likely to be office workers and more likely to be in mid to upper level management, and of course, have more access to be able to do their work. They’re knowledge workers anywhere that they have an internet connection. The other income brackets are, you know, not as able to do that, in large part because they have to show up to their jobs.
Levulis: Yeah, right. There are just certain sectors that absolutely do not lend themselves to teleworking.
Farmer: Right. Yes, I mean, think public transit. Doctors, nurses, a lot of the people during the pandemic we called frontline workers, and people who work in grocery stores, utility workers. I mean, these folks were literally keeping the lights on and the roads open during the pandemic for all of the things that needed to happen on this emergency basis. A lot of those people were paid a pittance. And that's, you know, a story that we saw again and again, as the pandemic emerged. Telework is also an equity issue. You know, those who had the means to work from home did. Those who didn't have the means to work from home, didn't. And they were more often than not, also those who are more vulnerable health wise, two contrasting kind of coronavirus and more likely to have long lasting negative effects from it, if not, you know, fatal effects.
Levulis: And your brief notes that for households earning at least $100,000 a year, the rate of an individual working from home dipped to 55% in early spring of 2021 after hovering around 64%. But then climbed back up to near 60% with the onset of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. With the thinking that COVID-19 is likely to surge seasonally, such as the flu, could we looking, at the data that you've collected, see teleworking rates fluctuate seasonally going forward?
Farmer: Certainly depending on again, you know, the type of worker we're talking about. So what the data shows is that there is more volatility in those who earn more money, and those who are more likely to telework. So, kind of, as you mentioned, there is more I guess, responsiveness to external conditions such as you know, a virus surge or anything else in the higher income brackets. The lower income brackets again, because those are kind of a proxy for also, you know, you have to show up to do your job in-person, less volatility there because they got to show up, no matter what's going on. Now, those who earn more tend to more likely than not have the choice of whether or not they feel like physically going into the office or doing their work from home. It wouldn't be out of line to expect and possibly even plan for that kind of seasonality at least if you are a city that has a lot of office workers.
Levulis: And another interesting aspect of the brief that you compiled here is the advent of teleworking allowed people to move at times wherever they wanted to, including the states that had seen declining populations, they actually saw a pandemic boost to their populations, including in our region here in the Northeast, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. You also cite West Virginia, offered an incentive program. Is that trend likely to continue? Or have we kind of seen that come and go?
Farmer: You know, I don't have a crystal ball. But you know, from my conversations with people, and this is largely anecdotal, we don't know what's going to happen. But it seems as though that kind of push of, ‘Oh, gosh, let's move to wherever we want to,’ you know, that for those states to be able to take advantage of, you know, that willingness to move and change gears, it seems that that's largely over. Now, you do have states like West Virginia and cities like Tulsa, a lot of places are still doing this whole moving incentive thing. And along with that, there are conditions, you have to live there for at least two years to be able to take full advantage of the cash incentives, you know, that kind of thing. But, you know, by and large, as we've seen this evening out of the rates of telework in large cities, to me, that would indicate that people are settling in to whatever this new normal is. And I would guess that those places that have seen any kind of influx of population from the pandemic, probably shouldn't expect that to keep going up, just to be safe.
Levulis: You mentioned that that new normal of this economy, this mix of telework/in-person. Going to the crystal ball that you mentioned, you do not have but looking at this data, what do you conclude about the future of teleworking in the broader American economy going forward?
Farmer: Like many things, the pandemic accelerated a trend that was already happening. With this one in particular, I mean, it kind of just blew the door open. The rates of telework before the pandemic were, it was pretty uncommon. And now it's, it's almost an expected part of jobs in a lot of places. And I think going forward, we'll probably see, you know, we'll continue to see some kind of evening out mostly in cities. Cities have a lot to contend with and we don't know what it's gonna look like five years from now, 10 years from now. But if you're a city planner, you have to, at least, you know, take a stab at, you know, figuring that out. And the daytime population of cities is definitely the kind of economic driving force that's going to have to be reevaluated. And so whether that means building more housing in cities, or cultural amenities to attract residents. Some places like Miami, they’re one of the cities that has more in-person occupations, they might not change all that much. So, I think it really depends on the composition of, you know, the economy of the cities. And then, you know, extending to the larger metropolitan region around that, you know, certainly telework is something that's, as we've seen already affecting housing prices, affecting office space, affecting tax revenue for cities and suburbs. And this is, you know, they've called the “great resignation” sometimes gets called a great reshuffling. And I think that's what we're seeing here with telework, you know, people are still kind of figuring out what works best for them. And, you know, local governments are really kind of along for the ride and trying to do the best they can to plan for what they think is going to happen. But hopefully, the data we have here at least lays out some, you know, kind of markers to look for, and for especially, I think for city planners to kind of see where their metropolitan region is settling in. And then hopefully that can help inform any decisions going forward.
Levulis: And what about from the business side, the employer side of things, if I'm telling my employee, my worker that they have to come in to the job site. In the future will I have to provide an incentive love to cover the cost of their travel if you know some of their colleagues are teleworking, they have to pay for public transportation pay for their mileage, their parking, you think that sort of thing could be in the mix?
Farmer: It could be and which is interesting, because I think those kinds of things used to be, you know, I don't want to say standard but much more common back in the world, and certainly that was not a thing as common before the in the years before the pandemic, but I do think we are seeing this rise, the rise of the worker. Workers are able to ask for more now, because of this leverage of the need for people, for employers to fill these open slots they have. But I think one interesting thing that the data shows in terms of you know, what you mentioned before about this, you know, kind of push-pull demand from those who think that we need to be more on the opposite, who are typically in management, and those who don't want to be in the office as much or want that flexibility. We see that in the data. When you look at the remote work by employee age, you know, everyone's remote, that means that there wasn't much difference. So except for the older bracket, 55 to 64 in the early months of the pandemic. But after April 2021, which is kind of, you know, our barometer for like how are things starting to normalize, you see this separation. So those who are most likely to telework now are between the age of 25 and 39, or 40 to 54. So it's those older workers who also tend to either be close to retirement or in management. You know, those are the ones in charge. And this is anecdotal. But I hear this a lot from folks who are, you know, in their 40s and 30s, feeling like they want more flexibility, and they're feeling this resistance from those in management, who want to kind of have more of an in-person work, atmosphere again you know, maybe offering telework once a week or once every other week, sort of thing. And, you know, I've seen this again this is anecdotal and conversational, not necessarily based on any official survey data, but you do see that in the data, this kind of separation in terms of who's teleworking, you know, by age, and there is a big difference between the 25 to 39 age bracket and, and some of those other ones.
