The New Geography of Labor Markets

Mert Akan (), Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Tom Bowen (), Shelby Rae Buckman (), Steven J. Davis () and Hyoseul Kim ()
Additional contact information
Mert Akan: Stanford University
Shelby Rae Buckman: Stanford University
Steven J. Davis: Hoover Institution
Hyoseul Kim: Stanford University

No 18278, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study where Americans live in relation to their employer’s worksite using matched employer-employee data, and how that relationship changes with the rise of work from home (WFH). Mean distance from home to employer’s worksite rose more than 70% between 2019 and 2024 in our dataset. Twelve percent of employees hired after March 2020 reside fifty or more miles from their employer by 2024, triple the pre-pandemic share. Distance to employer rose most for those in their 30s and 40s, among highly paid employees, and in Finance, Information, and Professional Services. Especially for the affluent, the pandemic-instigated rise in WFH initiated a multi-year pattern of net migration to areas with cheaper housing and states with lower tax rates. Finally, we show that distant employees exhibit more sensitivity to firm-level adjustments on hiring and separation margins. These developments have implications for residential location, state-level tax revenues, labor markets, and household welfare.

Keywords: worker migration; housing costs and relocation; taxes and relocation; hires and separations; distance to employer; remote jobs; work from home; geographic extent of labor markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 J3 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18278.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The New Geography of Labor Markets (2025)
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:iza:izadps:dp18278

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().