New research shows that remote workers have reduced their time at work and increased their time in leisure substantially between 2019 to 2023.
There’s no debate that remote work is here to stay, but the question is what shape it takes and how different types of workers are changing the amount of time they work. My new research shows that remote workers have reduced their time at work and increased their time in leisure substantially between 2019 to 2023, and these trends continued into 2023.
How to measure time spent working
To explore the effects of this shift, I used data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), restricted to employed, full-time respondents aged 25 to 65, providing a comprehensive measurement of time allocated to various activities with minimal measurement error.
To measure remote work, I used the “remotability” index from professors Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman’s 2020 paper in the Journal of Public Economics, which is based on the Department of Labor’s O*NET task-level data on how many tasks in an occupation can be done remotely.
This data set offers more reliable insights than other labor supply surveys, such as the Current Population Survey or the American Community Survey, due to reduced recall bias. Furthermore, the analysis focused on non-self-employed workers, as their occupational classification is clearer.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY Christos A. Makridis: https://www.fastcompany.com/91172015/remote-work-does-make-more-time-for-work-life-balance-heres-the-data
