CAMBRIDGE, MA – The state of Colorado has been identified as the work-from-home capitol of the United States, with slightly more than 37 percent of its workforce reporting that they worked from home at least part of the time.
Don’t worry – Utah isn’t far behind. In fifth place among the 50 states, Utah had 36 percent (or 620,000) of its workers in the same boat.
The dramatic increase in the number of U.S. home-based workers is one positive result of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, according to a recent study by the Massachusetts-based SelectSoftware Reviews.
That study – based on analysis of data from January to September of 2023 compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau – revealed the top ten states for home-based workers and a wealth of other information about new national labor trends.
In April, the Census Bureau released a study – entitled Home-Based Workers and the COVID-19 Pandemic – that indicated that home-based workers more than tripled between 2019 and 2021 on a national level.
In 2019, the American Community Survey found that about 9 million people – or 5.7 percent of the American workforce – were engaged in home-based work on a regular basis nationwide.
By 2021 – for obvious reasons of social distancing and crowd-avoidance during the pandemic – that number had grown to about 28 million, nearly 18 percent of the workforce.
Analysis of 2023 data by researchers from SelectSoftware Reviews revealed the number of home-based workers has continued to grow to about 27 percent U.S. workforce (about 37 million workers).
On a national level, about 7.8 percent of people polled by the Census’ 2023 Household Pulse Survey reported that they work remotely 1-2 days per week; 5.7 percent reported working remotely 3 to 4 days per week; and 13.2 percent report working full-time from home.
That trend acceleration is the result of employers offering flexible work arrangements for their workers during COVID lock-downs that have since become at least semi-permanent.
The benefits of those work-from-home models include letting employers tap into a broader talent pool and reduce overhead costs associated with maintaining large physical office spaces.
The more than 60 percent of Americans not working from home in 2023 are usually involved in hands-on work that cannot be easily performed remotely, including retail sales, hospitality, health care, manufacturing and manual labor.
American workers with higher incomes and education levels are naturally more likely to work from home. But Utah work-from-home statistics tend to buck some national trends.
At a national level, less than 2 percent of remote workers have less than a high school diploma and only 16.5 percent of remote workers have only a high school or a GED certificate.
At 23 percent, however, Utah has the highest percentage of workers whose highest level of education is a high school diploma or GED.
Moreover, a whopping 20 percent of Utahns who never completed high school are still working from home, although most of them are earning $25,000 or less.
On a national level, only 3.1 percent of remote workers earned less than $25,000 per year.
Massachusetts is at the other end of the income scale with the highest percentage of remote workers – 81 percent — earning $200,000 or more.
Louisiana has the smallest percentage of remote workers, with just 13.8 percent of its labor force involved in work-from-home employment.
The American Community Survey is an annual nationwide survey designed to provide Census officials with timely and reliable data on the characteristics of the nation, states, counties and other localities.
For additional information about the research by SelectSoftware Review of Cambridge, MA to go to https://selectsoftwarereviews.com/blog/work-from-home-hotspots-usa