Summary
The core objective of this project was to study the development of working from home using a very large and comprehensive dataset of online job postings where those postings offering working from home had been identified. The data revealed interesting patterns where there has been a clear increase in working from home job postings, but those showed limited regional or sectoral patterns and did not show any particular pattern in terms of gendered occupations. What emerged, though, is a clear pattern of growth in working from home in job postings requiring high levels of education. A further striking pattern is that whereas remote work has in the past offered a wage premium, that premium has shrunk and is in fact negative in those postings requiring high education. What this means in total is that there has been a real shift happening in the labor market, accelerated by COVID, with high-skilled, cognitive labor increasingly done remotely, though with the same or even lower salary. At the same time, less-skilled work continues to be mostly face-to-face. This has significant implications for companies, for instance for creating corporate culture with remote workers, but also for cities with high-skilled workers possibly migrating to cheaper living conditions elsewhere.
Project development
The project had a slow start in particular due to the COVID pandemic, but the work has started to pick up speed and is still ongoing. The objectives in terms if publications have not yet been reached.
Impact and outputs
Remote work, or working from home, is a very important trend that has been accelerated by the COVID pandemic. Its implications are now slowly starting to be understood. This project makes a contribution to this developing understanding. By demonstrating in a large, comprehensive dataset the growth of working from home in particular among the highly educated, it adds an important angle to the emergent conversation.
The project has so far resulted in a working paper and has been presented in the Madrid Work and Organizations conference in May 2022. More outputs are expected shortly.
