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Work From Home Data Shows Who’s Fully Remote, Hybrid and in Person

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8 months ago

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The American workplace’s experiment with remote work happened, effectively, overnight: With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, more than half of workers began working from home at least part of the time, according to Gallup. But the shift to a permanent hybrid-work reality has been gradual, with periods of tension as workers across white-collar industries pushed against executives’ return-to-office orders.

Those battles have largely come to an end, and workplaces have reached a new hybrid-work status quo. Roughly one-tenth of workers are cobbling together a combination of work in the office and from home, and a similar portion are working entirely remotely.

This population of hybrid and remote workers in the United States doesn’t quite mirror the larger population of workers: Government data shows they tend to have more education and are more often white and Asian.

Each square here represents 50,000 workers between the ages of 18 and 64. In 2023, about 143 million people in that age range were working in the United States.

A graphic shows a grid of squares representing 143 million workers between 18 and 64.

Roughly 80 percent of those work fully in person. The remaining work either a hybrid schedule or fully remote.

The grid is then split into three sections with color, showing that roughly 115 million of the total 143 million workers are working in person, while about 14 million work a hybrid schedule and another 15 million work fully remote.

If we look at all workers by their level of education, the biggest group of workers have no college education.

The squares are then arranged by education level, showing that the largest group of workers, more than 47 million, have no college education.

But if we focus on just those who work at home all or some of the time, college educated workers become the most prominent. Working from home is, for the most part, a luxury for the highly educated.

All of the squares representing workers who work in person fly out of the graphic, leaving only workers who work either hybrid or fully remote. The largest group left is now workers with a bachelor’s degree, 12.5 million, followed by workers with graduate degrees, another eight million.

The pandemic laid bare inequalities in the American economy. White-collar workers were in many cases able to do their jobs safely at home, but lower-income workers often had to continue to work in person, even when health risks were highest. And now that the public health emergency is over, that workplace divide — who gets the benefits of remote flexibility and who does not — has become entrenched.

White and Asian workers are more likely to work from home

Share of fully remote and hybrid workers who identify as a given race or ethnicity vs. the same group’s share of the entire work force

The divide in who gets the flexibility to work remotely also reflects the country’s racial inequalities. Because white and Asian workers are more likely to hold office jobs, they are more likely to have the opportunity to work remotely part or all of the time. Black and Hispanic workers, meanwhile, more frequently hold jobs in food service, construction, retail, health care and other fields that require them to be in person.

The youngest workers are working from home less often

Share of fully remote and hybrid workers who fall in each age group vs. the same group’s share of the entire work force

When employers were first mounting their return-to-office battles, many assumed that their youngest employees would be the toughest to persuade to come back. But today, young people make up a greater share of those working in person than their share of the total work force.

That is partly because a smaller share of Americans under 25 have completed college degrees. Many work in jobs like food service that cannot be done remotely. But that is not the whole story: Even among college graduates, workers in their 20s are more likely to be in the office full time than their older colleagues. That suggests that young workers are embracing the benefits of in-person work: socialization, mentorship and face time with the boss. The potential downsides of fixed office schedules may also matter less to them: Relatively fewer young workers might have children (or aging parents) at home, making remote flexibility less of a priority.

More women work remotely, but it’s complicated.

Remote work also breaks down along gender lines — though it does not lend itself to a simple narrative.

Overall, women are more likely than men to work remotely. That’s partly because more women have college degrees, so more of them are in the kind of professional jobs in which flexible arrangements have become the norm. Even among those without college degrees, women are more likely to work at a desk in an administrative or customer support role, while men more often work in construction, manufacturing and other jobs that can only be done in person.

Looking narrowly at just college graduates, remote work patterns for women and men look more evenly distributed, with men slightly more likely to work remotely than women. But there’s one place where the pattern looks different: among parents with young children.

Parents have been some of the biggest winners in the flexible-work era. Remote flexibility made more feasible the constant juggling of professional and caretaking obligations. But it is mothers, not fathers, who appear to be taking the most advantage of workplace flexibility, whether out of choice or necessity.

Share of fully remote and hybrid college-educated workers who have children or not, by gender

Note: Young kids are those 5 years old or younger.

Among college-educated men, having children does not make much difference to whether they work at home or in person. Among women, it’s a different story. Mothers of young children are much more likely to work remotely than women without children or mothers of older children.

When possible, disabled workers often choose to go fully remote

Fully remote and hybrid work often get talked about in the same breath. But in some cases, the implications are different.

For many workers with disabilities, the normalization of remote work has offered an opportunity to avoid energy-draining commutes and offices that are not designed to accommodate their needs. For others, it has opened up pathways into industries that were previously difficult to break into.

But those gains come primarily from fully remote work, not the hybrid model that has come to dominate some industries. Workers with disabilities are 22 percent more likely to work fully remotely than otherwise similar workers without disabilities, but only slightly more likely to work a hybrid schedule, according to research from the Economic Innovation Group. Workers with disabilities that limit mobility, such as those who use wheelchairs, were particularly likely to benefit from the opportunity to work entirely from home.

Employers should “understand the significant difference between full-remote and hybrid-remote,” the researchers wrote. “A labor market that includes a greater number of full-remote jobs will open the door for far more otherwise qualified workers.”

Methodology

The data in this article comes from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of 60,000 U.S. households conducted by the Census Bureau. Respondents are asked how many hours they worked the previous week, and how many of those hours they teleworked or worked from home. “Fully remote” workers are those who worked all of their hours remotely; “hybrid” workers are those who worked some but not all of their hours remotely. Respondents who were not employed, or who did not work at all in the previous week, are excluded. Data shown is for calendar year 2023. Figures are rounded throughout.

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Economics

UK inflation, November 2024

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11 hours ago

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December 18, 2024

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The columns of Royal Exchange are dressed for Christmas, at Bank in the City of London, the capital’s financial district, on 20th November 2024, in London, England.

Richard Baker | In Pictures | Getty Images

LONDON — U.K. inflation rose to 2.6% in November, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday, marking the second straight monthly increase in the headline figure.

The reading was in line with the forecast of economists polled by Reuters, and climbed from 2.3% in October.

Core inflation, excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, came in at 3.5%, just under a Reuters forecast of 3.6%.

Headline price rises hit a three-and-a-half year low of 1.7% in September, but was expected to tick higher in the following months, partly due to an increase in the regulator-set energy price cap this winter.

“This upwards trajectory looks set to continue over the next few months,” Joe Nellis, economic adviser at accountancy MHA, said in emailed comments on Wednesday, citing the energy market and “the long-term pressure of a tight domestic labor market.”

Persistent inflation in the services sector, the dominant part of the U.K. economy, has led money markets to price in almost no chance of an interest rate cut during the Bank of England’s final meeting of the year on Thursday. Those bets were solidified earlier this week when the ONS reported that regular wage growth strengthened to 5.2% over the August-October period, up from 4.9% over July-September.

The November data showed services inflation was unchanged at 5%.

If the BOE leaves monetary policy unchanged in December, it will finish out the year with just two cuts of its key rate, bringing it from 5.25% to 4.75%. The European Central Bank has meanwhile enacted four quarter-percentage-point cuts and this month signaled a firm intention to move lower next year.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to trim rates by a quarter point at its own meeting on Wednesday, taking total cuts of the year to a full percentage point. Some skepticism lingers over whether it should take this step, given inflationary pressures.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.

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Economics

The Fed has a big interest rate decision coming Wednesday. Here’s what to expect

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22 hours ago

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December 17, 2024

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference following the November 6-7, 2024, Federal Open Market Committee meeting at William McChesney Martin Jr. Federal Reserve Board Building, in Washington, DC, November 7, 2024. 

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Inflation is stubbornly above target, the economy is growing at about a 3% pace and the labor market is holding strong. Put it all together and it sounds like a perfect recipe for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates or at least to stay put.

That’s not what is likely to happen, however, when the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s rate-setting entity, announces its policy decision Wednesday.

Instead, futures market traders are pricing in a near-certainty that the FOMC actually will lower its benchmark overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. That would take it down to a target range of 4.25%-4.5%.

Even with the high level of market anticipation, it could be a decision that comes under an unusual level of scrutiny. A CNBC survey found that while 93% of respondents said they expect a cut, only 63% said it is the right thing to do.

“I’d be inclined to say ‘no cut,'” former Kansas City Fed President Esther George said Tuesday during a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview. “Let’s wait and see how the data comes in. Twenty-five basis points usually doesn’t make or break where we are, but I do think it is a time to signal to markets and to the public that they have not taken their eye off the ball of inflation.”

Former Kansas City Fed Pres. Esther George: I would not cut rates this week

Inflation indeed remains a nettlesome problem for policymakers.

While the annual rate has come down substantially from its 40-year peak in mid-2022, it has been mired around the 2.5%-3% range for much of 2024. The Fed targets inflation at 2%.

The Commerce Department is expected to report Friday that the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, ticked higher in November to 2.5%, or 2.9% on the core reading that excludes food and energy.

Justifying a rate cut in that environment will require some deft communication from Chair Jerome Powell and the committee. Former Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren also recently told CNBC that he would not cut at this meeting.

“They’re very clear about what their target is, and as we’re watching inflation data come in, we’re seeing that it’s not continuing to decelerate in the same manner that it had earlier,” George said. “So that, I think, is a reason to be cautious and to really think about how much of this easing of policy is required to keep the economy on track.”

Fed officials who have spoken in favor of cutting say that policy doesn’t need to be as restrictive in the current environment and they don’t want to risk damaging the labor market.

Chance of a ‘hawkish cut’

If the Fed follows through on the cut, it will mark a full percentage point lopped off the federal funds rate since September.

While that’s a considerable amount of easing in a short period of time, Fed officials have tools at their disposal to let the markets know that future cuts won’t come so easily.

One of those tools is the dot-plot matrix of individual members’ expectations for rates over the next few years. That will be updated Wednesday along with the rest of the Summary of Economic Projections that will include informal outlooks for inflation, unemployment and gross domestic product.

Another is the use of guidance in the post-meeting statement to indicate where the committee sees policy headed. Finally, Powell can use his news conference to provide further clues.

It’s the Powell parley with the media that markets will be watching most closely, followed by the dot plot. Powell recently said the Fed “can afford to be a little more cautious” about how quickly it eases amid what he characterized as a “strong” economy.

“We’ll see them leaning into the direction of travel, to begin the process of moving up their inflation forecast,” said Vincent Reinhardt, BNY Mellon chief economist and former director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Fed, where he served 24 years. “The dots [will] drift up a little bit, and [there will be] a big preoccupation at the press conference with the idea of skipping meetings. So it’ll turn out to be a hawkish cut in that regard.”

What about Trump?

Powell is almost certain to be asked about how policy might position in regard to fiscal policy under President-elect Donald Trump.

Thus far, the chair and his colleagues have brushed aside questions about the impact Trump’s initiatives could have on monetary policy, citing uncertainty over what is just talk now and what will become reality later. Some economists think the incoming president’s plans for aggressive tariffs, tax cuts and mass deportations could aggravate inflation even more.

“Obviously the Fed’s in a bind,” Reinhart said. “We used to call it the trapeze artist problem. If you’re a trapeze artist, you don’t leave your platform to swing out until you’re sure your partner is swung out. For the central bank, they can’t really change their forecast in response to what they believe will happen in the political economy until they’re pretty sure there’ll be those changes in the political economy.”

“A big preoccupation at the press conference is going to the idea of skipping meetings,” he added. “So it’ll turn out to be, I think, a hawkish easing in that regard. As [Trump’s] policies are actually put in place, then they may move the forecast by more.”

Other actions on tap

Most Wall Street forecasters see Fed officials raising their expectations for inflation and reducing the expectations for rate cuts in 2025.

When the dot plot was last updated in September, officials indicated the equivalent of four quarter-point cuts next year. Markets already have lowered their own expectations for easing, with an expected path of two cuts in 2025 following the move this week, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure.

The outlook also is for the Fed to skip the January meeting. Wall Street is expecting little to no change in the post-meeting statement.

Officials also are likely to raise their estimate for the “neutral” rate of interest that neither boosts nor restricts growth. That level had been around 2.5% for years — a 2% inflation rate plus 0.5% at the “natural” level of interest — but has crept up in recent months and could cross 3% at this week’s update.

Finally, the committee may adjust the interest it pays on its overnight repo operations by 0.05 percentage point in response to the fed funds rate drifting to near the bottom of its target range. The “ON RPP” rate acts as a floor for the funds rate and is currently at 4.55% while the effective funds rate is 4.58%. Minutes from the November FOMC meeting indicated officials were considering a “technical adjustment” to the rate.

Expect a 'hawkish cut' from the Fed this week, says BofA's Mark Cabana

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Economics

Iran faces dual crisis amid currency drop and loss of major regional ally

Published

2 days ago

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December 16, 2024

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A briefcase filled with Iranian rial banknotes sits on display at a currency exchange market on Ferdowsi street in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018.

Ali Mohammadi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Iran is confronting its worst set of crises in years, facing a spiraling economy along with a series of unprecedented geopolitical and military blows to its power in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, Iran’s currency, the rial, hit a record low of 756,000 to the dollar, according to Reuters. Since September, the embattled currency has suffered the ripple effects of devastating hits to Iran’s proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas, as well as the November election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.

With the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad amid a shock offensive by rebel groups, Tehran lost its most important ally in the Middle East. Assad, who is accused of war crimes against his own people, fled to Russia and left a highly fractured country behind him.

“The fall of Assad has existential implications for the Islamic Republic,” Behnam ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told CNBC. “Lest we forget, the regime ahs spent well over a decade in treasure, blood, and reputation to save a regime which ultimately folded in less than two weeks.”

The currency’s fall exposes the extent of the hardship faced by ordinary Iranians, who struggle to afford everyday goods and suffer high inflation and unemployment after years of heavy Western sanctions compounded by domestic corruption and economic mismanagement.

Trump has pledged to take a hard line on Iran and will be re-entering the White House roughly six years after unilaterally pulling the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal and re-imposing sweeping sanctions on the country.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed his government’s willingness to negotiate and revive the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which lifted some sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. But the attempted outreach comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency says Tehran is enriching uranium at record levels, reaching 60% purity — a short technical step from the weapons-grade purity level of 90%.

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