The Impacts of Remote Work

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As a result of the pandemic and the period of quarantine caused by it, working remotely has become more common than ever. A study conducted earlier this year by Owl Labs reported that nearly 70% of full time workers transferred over to remote work during the pandemic and that currently around 92% of people surveyed worked from home at least once a week. 82% of those surveyed also stated that they believed their companies would continue to support remote work even after the pandemic. With the recent widespread shift to remote work, it is important to understand the impacts of remote work and what it signifies for the businesses and economies as a whole.

Many studies and articles, including one published by the New York Times, found that remote work increased productivity. Upwork reported that most employees and managers felt that productivity increased when done remotely, and Douglas Quenqua wrote that “remote and online collaboration technology are proving to be helpful with hidden benefits like making teams work better together.” Last year a Mercer study found that 70% of companies were planning to adopt the hybrid model, with many companies already making the switch including companies such as Adobe, Salesforce, Spotify, and Twitter. According to Adam Ozimek, productivity would likely further develop as people adapted more to remote work, new technology was invented, and more remote businesses were started.

Remote work also changes employment in companies and increases opportunities for workers in numerous ways. Ozimek further wrote that with an increase in remote work, employers have become more inclined to “build hybrid teams made up of both full-time employees and freelance workers”, meaning more independent talent is being hired. Business Insider writes that “this increases the talent pool and opportunities for workers.” Richard Florida told Insider that remote work will accelerate the movement of families out of superstar cities into suburbs, as remote work reduces the necessity of living near large metropolitan areas in order to increase career potential. Ozimek and Florida both write that remote work will redistribute opportunities and attract talent across the country, changing economic development.

Despite these benefits, remote work has already been seen to create massive shifts within the country that increases inequalities, demonstrated by the unprecedented rates of women dropping out of the workforce with burdens of balancing work and home responsibilities falling disproportionately on working mothers. CFR also writes that large numbers of those in the labor force do not have the opportunity to work remotely, and that “experts say these developments could have profound implications for the economy, inequality, and the future of big cities.” Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University says that the shift to remote worse could lead to “worsening inequality” as educated and high-earning workers are much more likely to have the ability to work remotely and advance their careers while the nearly half of Americans who work in jobs like retail, customer service, or transport are left in the dust.

The Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan aims to fix these inequalities by providing access to affordable broadband internet, an essential step towards rectifying the labor divide increasing within the United States through remote work, allowing various people, including those in rural populations, to access more high-paying industrial jobs that are able to be performed virtually. While working from home does include numerous benefits such as increased productivity and increasing opportunities for employees, it also increases inequality within the labor market, which is important to reduce especially as remote work continues to rise.