Story at a glance
- The portion of fully remote workers dropped from about 18 to roughly 15 percent between 2021 and 2022.
- The percentage of fully remote workers is steadily declining but is still nearly three times as high as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Fewer Americans are working fully remotely as hybrid schedules become the new norm.
Fewer Americans are working from home than they were during the height of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
About 15 percent of all U.S. workers worked from home in 2022, down from almost 18 percent in 2021 or about 26.4 million people, according to a tip sheet from the bureau released earlier this week.
But while the amount of fully remote workers has dropped, the percentage of Americans working from home is still leagues above what it used to be.
In 2019, 5.7 percent of the country’s workforce did their jobs from home, according to the data.
Fewer people are working remotely in Puerto Rico as well. In 2022, about 6 percent of workers on the island worked from home representing a slight dip from 2021 numbers.
That year 7.4 percent of residents in the U.S. territory worked remotely. While that might not seem like much, it’s more than twice the share of workers who worked from home in 2019 — when it was only roughly 2.4 percent.
And as hybrid work schedules become more common, fewer Americans are working fully remote, per the data.
Published on Feb 22,2024