Alone time, work-from-home time rose in 2020, survey says

SAN DIEGO — The eruption of COVID-19 last year caused the proportion of people working from home in the U.S. to nearly double, with the shift most pronounced among college graduates and workers in such fields as finance and professional services.

The share of employed people working from home shot up from 22 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in 2020, the Labor Department said Thursday.

That was among the findings of an annual government survey that documents the far-reaching impact the viral pandemic has had on Americans’ everyday lives since it struck in March 2020. The American Time Use Survey details how people spent their time in 2020, from working to relaxing to sleeping.

The survey participants, all of whom are ages 15 or over, are interviewed by phone about everything they did in a 24-hour period leading up to the interview.

For 2020, the report covered only May through December, after the virus caused the suspension of data collection.

Because of the pandemic and the social distancing it required, people on average spent more time last year sleeping, watching TV, playing games, using a computer and relaxing and thinking — and less time socializing and communicating in person — than in 2019. Adults also spent more hours, on average, caring for children.

The survey also lends support to concerns that the pandemic worsened isolation for millions of Americans. With people working from home or attending school online, the time they spent alone increased. Among Americans ages 15 and over, time spent alone each day increased by an average of an hour. For those ages 15 to 19, it rose 1.7 hours per day.

Among workers with at least a bachelor’s degree ages 25 and over, 65 percent who were employed reported working from home in the 24-hour survey period in 2020 — a 28 percentage point increase from 2019. By contrast, 19 percent of employed workers in the same age bracket whose maximum education level is a high school diploma worked at home in 2020, up from 13 percent in 2019.

The transition to remote work was less common in sectors of the economy that involve face-to-face contact or specialized commercial equipment.