COVID-19 and Remote Work: An Early Look at US Data

We report the results of a nationally-representative sample of the US population during the COVID-19 pandemic.The survey ran in two waves from April 1-5, 2020 and May 2-8, 2020.Of those employed pre-COVID-19, we find that about half are now working from home, including 35.2% who report they were commuting and recently switched to working from home.In addition, 10.1% report being laid-off or furloughed since the start of COVID-19.There is a strong negative relationship between the fraction in a state still commuting to work and the fraction working from home.We find that the share of people switching to remote work can be predicted by the incidence of COVID-19 and that younger people were more likely to switch…