Working from Home after COVID-19: Evidence from Job Postings in 20 Countries
42 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 2022 Last revised: 26 Mar 2024
Date Written: March 18, 2022
Abstract
Remote work surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. To analyze its post-pandemic persistency, we construct an original dataset measuring remote and hybrid work (WFH) in 20 OECD countries and 55 occupations from January 2019 to December 2023, based on over 1 billion job postings from the global job site Indeed. The share of job postings advertising WFH more than quadrupled in the three years since January 2020 in the average country in our sample, increasing from about 2.5% to around 11%, and kept increasing also in 2023. Exploiting changes in pandemic severity across countries and differences in the feasibility of remote work across occupations in a difference-in-differences design, we find that increases in pandemic severity substantially raised advertised WFH, but pandemic easing had no effect. We then use job search data to document persistently high interest in WFH from jobseekers and conclude that the post-pandemic persistency of WFH may partly be a response by employers to demand for flexibility from workers.
Keywords: remote working, telework, COVID-19, mobility restrictions, stringency index
JEL Classification: D23, E24, J23, G18, M50
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