Map Shows States With The Most Remote Workers

In 2019, working from home was rare for Americans. But when COVID-19 hit in early 2020, everything changed.

According to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research, between April and December 2020 an estimated 50 percent of all paid work hours were from home, compared with just 5 percent prior to the pandemic.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that by 2023 that figure had dropped. Out of 155 million American workers, only 20 percent worked from home, and around half of those only some of the time.

California had the highest number of people working completely from home, with around 1.9 million fully remote workers.

In second and third, Texas had 1.5 million fully remote workers in 2023, while Florida had just over 1 million.

New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, Georgia, Arizona, Washington, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, and Massachusetts also had high numbers of fully remote workers.

The state with the smallest number of fully remote workers was Wyoming, with 14,000. Alaska was also at the bottom end of the ranking with just 19,000 fully remote workers.

Why Do Some States Have More Remote Workers Than Others?

Professor Jose Maria Barrero, who co-founded WFH Research, a project that studies the shift to working from home and its implications, told Newsweek that the higher number of remote workers in those states was largely connected to the higher population, which Stanford University Professor Nicholas Bloom also commented on.

Looking at the proportion of remote workers in each states, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia have a higher percentage of fully remote workers, while Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming are much lower.

Explaining these differences, Bloom told Newsweek via email that “places like Massachusetts have a lot of graduate educated workers and more tech and finance, which lends itself well to WFH.”

He added that “places like Alabama and Wyoming are more agriculture, mining and manufacturing focused which is not easy for WFH.”

Professor Bloom also said that there was also “a natural blue tilt on WFH — blue states with a lot of graduates tend to have higher WFH levels.”

The states that ranked highly for remote workers were among many of those that are traditionally Democrat-voting, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia, according to the election polling outlet 270toWin. Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming are all traditionally Republican states.

The Los Angeles Times also reported in 2023 that blue states tended to be more likely to post job opportunities that were remote-friendly.

Why Do Only Some Companies Support Remote Working?

In recent years there has been a well-publicized push from some companies to encourage or demand employees return to work, and the pros and cons have been hotly debated.

Barrero told Newsweek that one of the main benefits to remote work is that it may potentially increase motivation and satisfaction in workers, which means “they’re probably going to stay on the job for longer so any investments the company makes in them in terms of training and learning and developing them are going to be longer lasting and they won’t need to be recruiting all the time.”

Steven J Davis, director of research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, a public policy think tank, also told Newsweek that employers “can tap a larger talent pool and pay less for a given skill set when workers are fully remote.”

He highlighted that remote employees “don’t require office space and the overhead costs that come with a physical footprint.”

Allowing employees to work from home also lowers automobile emissions and reduces demands on fuel, roads, and transit systems, Davis said, and “by untethering worker residential locations from employer worksite locations, it becomes easier for couples to manage dual-career challenges.”

However, Davis said that there are drawbacks to remote working too. It can make training, mentoring, and building company culture more challenging while requiring changes in human resource practices and managerial style.

Bloom added that it’s not appropriate for all roles, and that for some jobs, it may decrease productivity.

Various studies have looked at productivity in workers who are remote versus those based in an office. Results have been mixed, suggesting that different industries and roles are affected in different ways by remote working. Barrero also previously told Fortune that while remote workers may be less productive per hour, they can actually be more productive per day.

Bloom thinks that remote working isn’t for everyone, saying it’s “often less suitable for younger workers, folks in highly interactive or innovative environments, or those with managerial activities.”

He said, “The future of most large firms is many fully in-person employees for front-line and customer-facing roles, hybrid for managers and professionals in head-office, and some fully-remote employees for back-office tasks.”

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