In Washington last year, nearly half of workers over the age of 16 preferred working from home rather than going to the office. This is about seven times more than before the pandemic, he points out The Washington Post, and significantly higher than the national average, assessed by the American Community Survey 2021 at 18% of workers.
However, according to the annual survey of 3.5 million American households, this percentage was higher in many urban areas in the United States, the newspaper said. Last year it was 46.8% in Seattle, 45.6% in San Francisco, 38.8% in Austin and 38.7% in Atlanta.
According to demographer William Frey, who works for the Brookings Institution, the percentage of people working from home strongly correlates with the percentage of workers with college degrees. The list of metropolises in which teleworking is particularly widespread therefore overlaps with that of large cities “The most educated” the United States. In Seattle, for example, 68.3% of residents aged 25 or over have at least a high school diploma (the equivalent of a college degree); in Washington they represent an average of 63% of the population – with strong disparities: this percentage drops to 33.7% in the black community. Data to be compared with the national average which is around 35%.
Cities like Atlanta (80.4% of college graduates) or San Francisco (where 79.5% of residents have at least a college degree) are taking action “Like magnets” for educated young adults, “often very computer savvy and professionally connected to the technology industries”, who are very well positioned to practice remote work on a daily basis, William Frey points out.
The latest data collected on the practice of teleworking therefore testify to “Huge change in the way Americans want to work” at a time when many companies are pressuring their employees to return to the workplace they knew before the health crisis.
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