Work from Home and Disability Employment

Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl and Dan-Olof Rooth

American Economic Review: Insights, 2026, vol. 8, issue 2, 179-95

Abstract: There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment since the pandemic, while work from home (WFH) has risen fourfold. This paper asks whether the two are causally related. Controlling for compositional changes and labor market tightness, a 1 percentage point increase in WFH increases full-time employment by 1.0 percent for individuals with a physical disability. The postpandemic increase in working from home explains 68-85 percent of the rise in full-time employment. Wage data suggest that WFH increased the supply of workers with a physical disability, likely by reducing commuting costs and enabling better control of working conditions.

JEL-codes: I12 J14 J22 J28 J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20240538 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E228047V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25370 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25371 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Work from Home and Disability Employment (2026)
Working Paper: Work from Home and Disability Employment (2026)
Working Paper: Work from Home and Disability Employment (2026)
Working Paper: Work from Home and Disability Employment (2025)
Working Paper: Work from Home and Disability Employment (2024)
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:aea:aerins:v:8:y:2026:i:2:p:179-95

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20240538

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review: Insights is currently edited by Amy Finkelstein

More articles in American Economic Review: Insights from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().