Remote Work: Increase in Lower-Income Workers and Decrease in Higher-Income Workers

Average Remote Work Time for US Employees 5 Hours 25 Minutes
Remote Work Continues Even After COVID-19

Although we have entered the post-pandemic era, remote work in the U.S. labor market is still being maintained.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 4th (local time), citing a U.S. Department of Labor survey, that the average remote work time for American workers last year was 5 hours and 25 minutes per day. This is 2 hours and 28 minutes longer than in 2019, just before the COVID-19 outbreak, and only 12 minutes less compared to 2021.

Photo by Yonhap News

Although most economic activities have normalized, the work style continues to be remote work as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is analyzed to be because the U.S. labor market favors workers and remote work has spread not only to white-collar office jobs but also to low-income, low-education, and service jobs.

Last year, the average remote work time for workers in the bottom 25% income bracket increased by more than 3 hours compared to before the pandemic, and by 1 hour and 19 minutes compared to 2021. This contrasts with the top 25% income Americans, whose remote work time decreased by 27 minutes compared to 2021.

Remote work for low-income office jobs, including call centers, is rather encouraged by companies. They realized that employee absenteeism decreases and office rental costs can be saved.

Accordingly, the remote work time for workers with a high school education last year increased by 3 hours compared to before the pandemic and by 42 minutes compared to 2021. Service workers’ remote work time increased by 2 hours compared to before the pandemic and by 32 minutes compared to 2021.

With the expansion of telehealth services after the pandemic, remote work jobs in the healthcare sector, which accounted for only 1.8% in 2019, increased to 4.9% last year.

However, there are also views that low-income service jobs converted to remote work may be replaced by overseas workers or artificial intelligence (AI) in the future.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.