People working from home included a larger number of younger, diverse, and better educated employees, who were more likely to move than before the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, survey data from the US Census Bureau showed.
The share of the US labor force working from home went from 5.7 percent in 2019 to 17.9 percent in 2021, as restrictions were implemented to help slow the spread of the virus, a report released last week based on American Community Survey data showed.
“The increase in home-based workers corresponded with a decline in drivers, carpoolers, transit riders and most other types of commuters,” the report said.
Photo: AP
The share of people working from home between ages 25 and 34 jumped from 16 percent to 23 percent from 2019 to 2021. The share of home-based workers who were black jumped from 7.8 percent to 9.5 percent, and from 5.7 percent to 9.6 percent for Asian workers. It remained flat for Hispanic workers, the report said.
The share of home-based workers with a college degree also jumped from about half to more than two-thirds, and people working from home were more likely to have moved in the past year than commuters.
The two industry groups that saw the greatest jumps in people working from home were in information fields, where it went from 10.4 percent to 42 percent, and finance, insurance and real estate going from 10.8 percent to 38.4 percent. Professional and administrative services went from 12.6 percent to 36.5 percent.
The smallest gains were in agriculture and mining, entertainment and food services, and armed forces.
While every income level saw jumps in people working from home, those in the highest income bracket were most likely to make the change. While the number doubled from 2019 to 2021 for workers in the lowest income bracket, it tripled for those in the highest, the report said.
Home-based work also varied by region. By 2021, it was more prevalent in the west and northeast US, making up about a fifth of the workforce, compared with 16.2 percent in the south and 15.8 percent in the US Midwest.
The variation might have been caused by the availability of Internet access, the cluster of information technology jobs on the coasts and the way people commute, whether by vehicle or public transportation, the report said.
The tech-heavy San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas had more than one-third of their labor force working from home in 2021 — the largest share among metros with more than 1 million residents.
Since most COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have been lifted since the 2021 survey was taken, it is unknown if the growth in work-from-home is permanent.
“If only temporarily, the COVID-19 pandemic generated a massive shift in the way people in the United States related to their workplace location,” the report said.
“With the centrality of work and commuting in American life, the widespread adoption of home-based work was a defining feature of the pandemic era,” it added.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home