Virus effect: More working at home, less socializing

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 just 22 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in 2020, the Labor Department said Thursday.

That was among the striking 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 of last year. 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 earlier in the year.)

Because of the pandemic and the widespread 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 in their household.

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, only 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 — from leisure and hospitality to transportation and utilities — than in sectors that do not.

While the share of people working remotely rose for both men and women, the increase was slightly higher among employed women. The share of women working from home jumped by 23 percentage points in 2020 compared with a 16 percentage point increase among men.

More time spent at home, working or otherwise, meant that Americans spent less time on the road. Average time spent on travel, such as commuting to work, declined by 26 minutes per day from 2019 to 2020.

Liana C. Sayer, director of the Maryland Time Use Laboratory at the University of Maryland, suggested that the shift to telework has likely accelerated Americans’ preference for flexibility in setting their work schedules — and perhaps raised expectations that employers will accommodate them.

“Workers have indicated in surveys done by companies and other research groups that they prefer having the ability to work at home and set their starting time and their ending time as they find most appropriate for their other needs,” Sayer said. “Some are signaling that they don’t really want to go back to life as it was in the office before the pandemic.”

The Labor Department’s annual survey seeks to measure how, where and with whom Americans spend their time. The latest results revealed that the increased time spent on child care in 2020 reflected the cancellation of in-person school instruction.