How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home?

Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman

No 26948, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Evaluating the economic impact of "social distancing" measures taken to arrest the spread of COVID-19 raises a fundamental question about the modern economy: how many jobs can be performed at home? We classify the feasibility of working at home for all occupations and merge this classification with occupational employment counts. We find that 37 percent of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home, with significant variation across cities and industries. These jobs typically pay more than jobs that cannot be done at home and account for 46 percent of all US wages. Applying our occupational classification to 85 other countries reveals that lower-income economies have a lower share of jobs that can be done at home.

JEL-codes: D24 J22 J61 O30 R12 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-soc and nep-ure
Note: ITI LS EFG PR
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1096)

Published as Jonathan I. Dingel & Brent Neiman, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, vol 189.

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