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Telework trends

By Connor Borkowski and Rifat Kaynas

During the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted the economy in 2020, employers had to adjust workplace operations to comply with social distancing guidelines.¹ Many employers responded by encouraging or requiring their employees to telework. Remote work increased in prevalence across the economy and at the start of 2024, the share of workers who telework continued to grow.

In October 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) added questions to the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) that focus on whether people had teleworked or worked at home for pay during the survey reference week and, if so, the number of hours they teleworked.²

This Beyond the Numbers article analyzes recent trends in telework data. It presents telework rates for many demographic and worker groups, including sex, age, race, disability status, educational attainment, occupation, and other characteristics. Additionally, it presents data on the number of hours workers teleworked.

In the CPS, telework questions are asked of people who were employed and “at work” during the survey reference week. That is, the questions are asked of people who performed some work for pay or profit, regardless of where this work was done. The telework questions are not asked of people who were employed but not at work for the entire week due to vacation, illness, or other reasons. In this paper, we use the term “telework rate,” which refers to the number of people who teleworked or worked at home for pay as a percentage of those who were employed and at work.

Who participates in telework? Demographic data for teleworkers in 2024

In the first quarter of 2024, 35.5 million people teleworked or worked at home for pay, up by 5.1 million over the year. These individuals accounted for 22.9 percent of people at work in the first quarter of 2024, higher than the rate of 19.6 percent recorded a year earlier. (See table 1.)

Table 1. People at work by telework status and selected characteristics for the first quarter, 2023–24 (Numbers in thousands)

Characteristic	First quarter 2023			First quarter 2024			Over-the-year change
	Total people at work [1]	Number of people who teleworked or worked at home for pay [2]	Percent who teleworked or worked at home for pay	Total people at work [1]	Number of people who teleworked or worked at home for pay [2]	Percent who teleworked or worked at home for pay	Percent who teleworked or worked at home for pay
Age and sex
Total, 16 years and over	154,396	30,307	19.6	155,068	35,452	22.9	3.3
16 to 24 years	19,225	1,304	6.8	18,769	1,485	7.9	1.1
25 to 54 years	99,539	21,749	21.8	100,274	25,176	25.1	3.3
55 years and over	35,632	7,254	20.4	36,025	8,791	24.4	4.0
Men, 16 years and over	82,216	15,015	18.3	81,976	17,284	21.1	2.8
Women, 16 years and over	72,180	15,291	21.2	73,092	18,168	24.9	3.7
Race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
White	118,115	22,837	19.3	118,180	27,373	23.2	3.9
Black or African American	19,925	3,109	15.6	20,069	3,430	17.1	1.5
Asian	10,617	3,384	31.9	10,753	3,524	32.8	0.9
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity	28,774	3,220	11.2	29,655	3,685	12.4	1.2
Disability status
With a disability	6,798	1,372	20.2	7,203	1,758	24.4	4.2
With no disability	147,598	28,934	19.6	147,864	33,694	22.8	3.2
Educational attainment
Total, 25 years and over	135,171	29,003	21.5	136,299	33,967	24.9	3.4
Less than a high school diploma	8,071	203	2.5	8,024	283	3.5	1.0
High school graduates, no college [3]	33,286	2,438	7.3	33,476	2,842	8.5	1.2
Some college or associate degree	33,537	5,129	15.3	33,761	6,178	18.3	3.0
Bachelor's degree and higher [4]	60,277	21,233	35.2	61,039	24,664	40.4	5.2
Bachelor's degree only	36,964	12,188	33.0	37,619	14,458	38.4	5.4
Advanced degree	23,312	9,045	38.8	23,420	10,206	43.6	4.8
Usual full- and part-time status
Full-time workers	128,705	27,132	21.1	128,219	31,402	24.5	3.4
Part-time workers	25,690	3,175	12.4	26,849	4,050	15.1	2.7
[1] Data refer to people who worked during the survey reference week regardless of telework status. Excludes employed people absent from work the entire week due to holidays, vacation, illness, or other reasons. [2] Includes people who teleworked for some but not all of their work hours. [3] Includes people with a high school diploma or equivalent. [4] Includes people with bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degrees. Note: Estimates for the race groups (White, Black or African American, and Asian) do not sum to totals because data are not presented for all races. People whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Data are not seasonally adjusted. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sex

Women were more likely to telework than men. In the first quarter of 2024, women had a telework rate of 24.9 percent, higher than men’s rate of 21.1 percent. Telework rates for both women and men were up over the year by 3.7 percentage points and 2.8 percentage points, respectively. (See chart 1.)

Age

Younger workers—ages 16 to 24—had a telework rate of 7.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024, much lower than the rates for workers age 25 and older. This in part reflects the type of work that young people do. Younger people are more likely than those age 25 and older to be employed in service occupations and to work part time, both of which have relatively lower rates of telework compared with other occupation groups and full-time workers. Workers age 25 and older were much more likely to telework than workers ages 16 to 24 years, with little difference in telework rates between workers ages 25 to 54 years, at 25.1 percent, and workers age 55 years and older, at 24.4 percent. In the first quarter of 2024, the telework rates among all age groups increased over the year.

Race and ethnicity

Asian and White workers were most likely to telework among the major race and ethnicity groups. Nearly one-third (32.8 percent) of employed Asians teleworked in the first quarter of 2024, the highest rate among the major race and ethnicity groups. Nearly one-quarter of White workers (23.2 percent) teleworked in the first quarter of 2024, while Black (17.1 percent) and Hispanic workers (12.4 percent) were less likely to telework. (See table 1.)

Educational attainment

There is a positive relationship between educational attainment and one’s likelihood of teleworking. Among people age 25 and older, those with advanced degrees teleworked the most, at 43.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024, higher than the rate recorded a year earlier, at 38.8 percent. Those whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree had a lower telework rate of 38.4 percent in the first quarter of 2024, while workers with some college or an associate degree (18.3 percent) and those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma (8.5 percent) were less likely to telework. People with less than a high school diploma were the least likely to telework, at 3.5 percent. In the first quarter of 2024, the telework rates for all the educational attainment groups increased over the year. (See chart 2.)

Presence of disability

The telework rates of people with a disability and people with no disability were little different from each other in the first quarter of 2024 (24.4 percent and 22.8 percent, respectively). The telework rate for workers with a disability increased by 4.2 percentage points over the year, while the rate for those with no disability increased by 3.2 percentage points. (See table 1.)

Select occupational groups

Among the major occupation groups, jobs that require a high degree of physical strength, such as natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations and production, transportation, and material moving occupations had relatively low rates of telework, both at 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2024.³

Service occupations had a telework rate of 5.4 percent in the first quarter of the year, while management, professional, and related occupations (37.9 percent) and sales and office occupations (24.9 percent) had higher rates of telework. (See chart 3.)

How many hours are employees teleworking each week?

In the first quarter of 2024, the overall telework rate averaged 22.9 percent, up 3.3 percentage points over the year. This is surprising, as anecdotal evidence suggests employers were implementing return-to-office policies during this period.³ However, consistent with this anecdotal evidence, CPS data show a reduced share of teleworkers who teleworked for all their work hours. (See chart 4.)

In the first quarter of 2023, 54.0 percent of those who teleworked did so for all their work hours. This rate decreased by 6.1 percentage points over the year, to 47.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024. Among all teleworkers, the distribution of work hours shows that 36.7 percent worked 40 or more hours from home in the first quarter of 2024, 6.1 percentage points lower than a year earlier (42.8 percent). In contrast, there was an increase in the share of those who teleworked 16 hours or fewer. The share of teleworkers who teleworked up to 8 hours in a week accounted for 15.2 percent of teleworkers in the first quarter of 2024, up by 3.2 percentage points over the year; the share of those who teleworked 9 to 16 hours was 18.1 percent in the first quarter of 2024, up by 3.3 percentage points over the year. (See chart 5.)

The average weekly hours teleworkers worked from home was 27.2 hours in the first quarter of 2024, down by 2.1 hours over the year. However, when looking at telework hours as a share of all hours worked in the first quarter of 2024, telework accounted for 16.3 percent of all hours worked, larger than the share recorded a year earlier, at 15.0 percent.⁴ These data reflect an increased share of people teleworking, but for fewer hours, and more people working some, but not all, of their work hours from home. (See chart 6.)

Conclusion

In conclusion, through the first quarter of 2024, the overall telework rate among the employed increased over the year while the average hours people spent teleworking decreased. Differences in telework rates among the employed varied by demographic and worker characteristics. Women were more likely to telework than men; workers ages 16 to 24 were less likely to telework than those who were older; workers who were Asian or White were more likely to telework than workers in the other major race groups; those who had higher levels of educational attainment had higher telework rates; and workers employed in management, professional, and related occupations were more likely to telework than those working in other occupations. Additionally, there was little difference in telework rates between those with and without a disability. These telework data were first collected in October 2022 and are an effort to regularly measure the incidence of telework.

 

This Beyond the Numbers article was prepared by Connor Borkowski and Rifat Kaynas, economists in the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (OEUS), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. E-mail: Borkowski.Connor@bls.gov and Kaynas.Rifat@bls.gov; telephone: (202) 691-6378.

If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services or the information voice phone at: (202) 691-5200. This article is in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission.