Work from home rate, explained

What it measures

The work-from-home (WFH) share is the percentage of workers 16 and older whose primary place of work is their home. The Census asks each worker for the main mode of travel to work and treats "worked from home" as a separate response category. Workers who travel to a workplace some days and work from home other days are categorized by the mode they use for the majority of their commute days. Hybrid workers who split evenly are typically captured in whichever mode the survey-week response reflected.

This is the metric that changed most dramatically across the 2020-2024 ACS releases. Pre-pandemic WFH share was about 5% nationally; the 2020 ACS captured the lockdown period and shot up to about 18%; subsequent years have settled in the 14% range as offices have partially reopened.

Why it matters

WFH share is the single most consequential structural change in the US labor market of the last decade. It has rewired commercial real-estate demand (office vacancy rates in major business districts remain elevated), accelerated migration out of expensive coastal metros into mid-sized inland metros, shifted retail and restaurant demand from downtowns to suburbs, and produced lasting changes in commute mode share (the workers most able to WFH are the ones who had the longest commutes, so removing them from the commute base shortened average commutes). The metric is the cleanest indicator of which metros and cities have the highest concentration of knowledge-economy jobs that can be done remotely.

How the Census measures it

ACS Table B08301. The "worked from home" category is the source.

How to read the numbers

The US WFH share is about 14%. Among large metros, the leaders (Washington DC, San Francisco, Boulder CO, Raleigh-Durham, Austin) exceed 25%. The lowest rates are in metros dominated by manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality, healthcare, and other jobs that cannot be done remotely. State rates range from about 7% (Mississippi, West Virginia) to over 20% (Colorado, Washington). The metric is now the cleanest proxy for "knowledge-economy share" of a local labor market; it has effectively replaced the older "professional services share" as the most-watched white-collar concentration indicator.

Caveats and limitations

The figure measures primary work location, hybrid workers are classified by their dominant mode in the survey week, which can shift response to response. The metric also doesn't capture working-from-home for the self-employed, who have always had high WFH rates and are sometimes coded differently in occupational tables. Compare metro WFH shares against pre-pandemic baselines to track the durable shift.