Apart from burdening health institutions and the mental and physical health of the world's population, the coronavirus pandemic has reshaped several industries since March 2020. Almost all sectors involving on-site work including brick-and-mortar retail, hospitality and construction suffered structural setbacks. So did, in turn, employees in said sectors, who often are low-paid workers providing services integral to society and the economy that can't do their jobs remotely. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey also suggests that people with an academic background were and are still far more likely to be able to work from home at least partially.
For example, in June 2024, around 41 percent of all survey participants with a Bachelor's degree or higher said they worked remotely full-time or in part during the week before being surveyed. This large share also skews the share of all members of the workforce aged 25 or older working from home, which stood at 25 percent in the same month. On the other end of the spectrum, only four percent of people not having completed high school and around nine percent of those with a high school diploma but no further education worked remotely in June 2024.
Contrary to observations suggesting that the era of working from home was over, with major Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Walmart, Disney or Microsoft ordering their staff back to the office for at least a couple of days a week, the overall share of people working from their home office at least partially rose by roughly five percentage points from 19.4 percent in October 2022. At first glance, this might be attributed to the increasing prevalence of hybrid work. However, even when only looking at those who worked 100 percent remotely, the share in the total workforce increased by 1.3 percentage points between October 2022 and June 2024.
