Work from Home After the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Based on rich novel survey data, we document that 35.2 percent of the US workforce worked entirely from home in May 2020, up from 8.2 percent in February. Highly educated, high-income and white workers were more likely to shift to working from home and maintain employment following the pandemic. Individuals working from home daily before the pandemic lost employment at similar rates as daily commuters. This suggests that, apart from the potential for home-based work, demand conditions also mattered for job losses. We find that 71.7 percent of workers that could work from home effectively did so in May.

Wellbeing Literacy: A Capability Model for Wellbeing Science and Practice

“…Wellbeing in the workplace has become of greater interest in recent years [ 65 ] and particularly as the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic has been felt around the globe. Restrictions have forced between 30% and 50% of the world’s workforce to work from home [ 66 , 67 , 68 ] with negative consequences for worker wellbeing including working longer hours with fewer boundaries between ‘work’ and home’, increased levels of technostress, organizational change fatigue and feeling pressure to be constantly online/available [ 68 ]. Several aspects of wellbeing literacy make it an appropriate vehicle to enable wellbeing through face-to-face, virtual or hybrid work practices.…”

CanCOVID‐19 mitigation measures promote telework practices?

“…The key to successful implementation of this policy is when employers and employees share responsibilities and join efforts to sustain the business. The ability of many employees to telework has mitigate the resulting economic crisis (Barrero, Bloom, & Davis, 2020;Bick, Blandin, & Mertens, 2020;Brynjolfsson et al, 2020;Montenovo et al, 2020). Therefore, teleworking turned to be a crucial practice for both the private and public sectors in maintaining and sustaining the economy and work activities during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Furthermore, employees have to get use and familiarize themselves with different or new technological tools in addition to switching to a different way of organizing of work. This might lead to holdups and delays and explains partially why many workers perform their work tasks in a longer time (Bick et al, 2020).…”

Effects of Reduced Workplace Presence on COVID-19 Deaths: An Instrumental-Variables Approach

“…Google has compiled data on its users who allow their accounts to track their location, and has now made this data available to the public during the pandemic. 3 We use the average percentage change in the number of Google users who were physically at their workplace in each week, compared to a baseline measured over January 3 to February 6. This is our main variable of interest, denoted below as atworkct for county c in week t. We define the weeks using the same method as we do with the mortality data: the weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday.…”

“…Hanson J-test is used to test(3), which is a test of the validity of the instruments but can also be read as a test of the validity of the overall specification of the model. Once again, since our IV's are predetermined pre-pandemic variables plus interactions with week dummies, a rejection of this test is best interpreted as a rejection of the specification rather than exogeneity of the instruments.…”