Work-from-Home in Transition: Adoption, Persistence, and Labor Market Impacts
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (EST)
- Chair: Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University and NBER
Has the Rise of Work from Home Reduced the Motherhood Penalty in the Labor Market?
Abstract
Has the Rise of Work-from-Home Reduced the Motherhood Penalty in the Labor Market?Abstract: When women become mothers, they often leave the labor force. Will the recent rise of work-from-home (WFH) reduce the motherhood penalty in the labor market, particularly in traditionally family-unfriendly careers? In the decade before the pandemic, technological improvements increased WFH for workers with some college degrees but not others. In degrees where WFH increased, motherhood gaps in employment narrowed. On average, a ten percent increase in WFH is associated with an 0.78 percentage point (or 0.94%) increase in mothers’ employment relative to that of other women. This pattern holds when defining the change in WFH using only the behavior of men, when instrumenting for the change in WFH using the in-person nature of work, and when conditioning on other changes within affected degrees in, e.g., hours and income. These trends suggest that the rise of WFH transformed a broader set of jobs into more family-friendly occupations. Traditionally flexible jobs in sectors like education and pharmacy were relatively unaffected by the rise of WFH, while motherhood employment gaps narrowed in traditionally family-unfriendly fields like finance and marketing.
Why Does Working from Home Vary Across Countries and People?
Abstract
We use two surveys to assess why work from home (WFH) varies so much across countries and people. A measure of cultural individualism accounts for about one-third of the cross-country variation in WFH rates. Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US score highly on individualism and WFH rates, whereas Asian countries score low on both. Other factors such as cumulative lockdown stringency, population density, industry mix, and GDP per capita also matter, but they account for less of the variation. When looking across individual workers in the United States, we find that industry mix, population density, and lockdown severity help account for current WFH rates, as does the partisan leaning of the county in which the worker resides. We conclude that multiple factors influence WFH rates, and technological feasibility is only one of them.Measuring the Ins and Outs of Remote Work: New Evidence from the Gallup Workplace Panel
Abstract
This study novel longitudinal survey data to analyze transitions into and out of remote work (work from home, or WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on two waves of the nationally representative Remote Life Survey conducted in collaboration with Gallup, we document persistent heterogeneity in WFH status across individuals, occupations, and firm characteristics. We find that remote work adoption is highly persistent: over 70% of those who adopted WFH in 2020 continued to work remotely in 2021. Larger firms were initially more likely to adopt remote work practices, but the relationship between firm size and long-term WFH adoption follows an inverse-U shape. Occupational “remotability,” as measured by the Dingel-Neiman score, significantly predicts both temporary and permanent WFH transitions. Childcare responsibilities exhibit only limited correlation with WFH status, with some influence observed during the initial pandemic wave. These findings underscore the role of occupation and firm-level factors in shaping WFH dynamics and point to durable changes in work organization beyond the pandemic period.JEL Classifications
- D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics
- J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor