Majority of US workforce continues to work remotely amid coronavirus: poll

A majority of the United States workforce is continuing to work remotely all of the time or part-time as the coronavirus pandemic stretches on, according to a new Gallup poll.

Almost 56 percent of workers surveyed reported that they were working remotely in January.

That number was just 2 percentage points down from the 58 percent of workers who reported working from home in the previous four months, Gallup reported.

In April, 70 percent of the working population polled reported working remotely at the height of the pandemic.

That number has slowly dropped in the following months as less people reported “always” working remotely, according to the poll. The percentage of people who said they “always” work from home dropped from 52 percent in April to 33 percent in September and has largely remained the same in the following months.

Slightly over 20 percent of workers polled reported “sometimes” working remotely, and those who have reported “never” working remotely increased from 31 percent to 44 percent, according to Gallup.

The most recent polling on the U.S. workforce comes as the country prepares for a full-scale vaccination of the entire population. On Thursday, Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, predicted that “open season” for anyone to receive a coronavirus vaccine might start as soon as April. 

Public health experts, including Fauci, have said that the U.S. might be able to return to some form of normalcy once 75 to 80 percent of the population is inoculated. 

Gallup conducted its most recent poll from Jan. 25 to Jan. 31. The survey results based on a total sample of U.S. adults was reported with a sampling error of 2 percentage points.