How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home?

Abstract

Evaluating the economic impact of "social distancing" measures taken to arrest the spread of COVID-19 raises a fundamental question about the modern economy: how many jobs can be performed at home?We classify the feasibility of working at home for all occupations and merge this classification with occupational employment counts. We find that 37 percent of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home, with significant variation across cities and industries. These jobs typically pay more than jobs that cannot be done at home and account for 46 percent of all US wages. Applying our occupational classification to 85 other countries reveals that lower-income economies have a lower share of jobs that can be done at home.

Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Our final set of analyses explore the relationship between our risk perception and social distancing measures and Trump VS for varying levels of high risk population (share of population over age 60) and ability to work from home. In both cases, we observe higher search share and greater social distancing where expected: when the share of the population over age 60 is higher, and in areas where the share of employment that can be done via telework (Dingel and Neiman, 2020) is higher. Even so, holding these elements constant, we continue to observe the divergence in response between high and low Trump VS counties, holding all else equal.…”

Optimal Targeted Lockdowns in a Multi-Group SIR Model

“…This number is chosen so that a full-year lockdown of all non-essential workers would lead to a roughly 50% decline in GDP. It is also in the ballpark of the numbers suggested in Dingel and Neiman (2020).…”

COVID-19 and Emerging Markets: A SIR Model, Demand Shocks and Capital Flows

“…We calculate the proximity values at the industry level after removing the teleworkable portion of the employees. We use Dingel and Neiman (2020)'s list of teleworkable occupations to capture the proportion of employment that can be fulfilled at remote locations in each industry.…”

“…O*NET OnLine, National Center for O*NET Development, www.onetonline.org/help/online/find occ. Accessed 1 April 2020 Dingel and Neiman (2020). also use several measures from O*NET to identify which occupations are teleworkable.…”