Who can log in? The importance of skills for the feasibility of teleworking arrangements across OECD countries

Ricardo Espinoza and Laura Reznikova
Additional contact information
Ricardo Espinoza: OECD
Laura Reznikova: OECD

No 242, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: COVID-19 lockdowns have radically changed the working arrangements for millions of workers. But who are the workers best positioned to work from home? Drawing on data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), we show that workers possessing higher levels of skills are significantly more likely to telework in OECD countries. We show that while 30% of workers could telework across the OECD, the likelihood decreases for workers without tertiary education and with lower levels of numeracy and literacy skills. The findings raise important questions with respect to the extent to which the pandemic could exacerbate existing labour market inequalities, and the extent to which these inequalities could further worsen amidst intensified technology adoption in the pandemic’s aftermath.

JEL-codes: D24 J22 J61 O30 R12 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06-25
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/3f115a10-en (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:elsaab:242-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().