Work from Home and Disability Employment

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

No 12604, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment since the pandemic. At the same time, work from home (WFH) has risen four-fold. 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% for individuals with a physical disability. The postpandemic increase in working from home explains 68%-85% of the rise in full-time employment. Wage data suggests that WFH increased the supply of workers with a physical disability, likely by reducing commuting costs and enabling better control of working conditions.

Keywords: work from home; disability employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-ltv, nep-mid and nep-tre
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12604

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