Please join us on Friday, April 26 from 1-2pm for a lecture by Steven J. Davis entitled “The Big Shift to Work from Home.” This talk, which will be presented in-person, is co-sponsored by the Macro Labor Center and coordinated by Benjamin Schoefer, a 2023-2024 Matrix Faculty Fellow.
Abstract
Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20-64 years old as of 2023. That’s about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s. I will explain why the shift to work from home has endured rather than reverting to pre-pandemic levels. I will then consider how work-from-home rates vary by worker age, sex, education, parental status, industry and local population density, and why it is higher in the United States than other countries. I will also discuss some implications for pay, productivity, and the pace of innovation. U.S. business executives anticipate modest further increases in work-from-home intensity over the next five years. Other factors that portend an enduring shift to work from home include rising distances between employee residences and employer locations, the ongoing adaptation of managerial practices, and further advances in technologies, products, and tools that support remote work.
About the Speaker
Steven J. Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Previously, he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, including service as a chaired professor and deputy dean of the faculty. Davis is an applied economist who studies working arrangements, business dynamics, economic fluctuations, policy uncertainty, and other topics. He is a co-founder of the Economic Policy Uncertainty project, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore.
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