Abstract
Evaluating the economic impact of "social distancing" measures taken to arrest the spread of COVID-19 raises a fundamental question about the modern economy: how many jobs can be performed at home? We classify the feasibility of working at home for all occupations and merge this classification with occupational employment counts. We find that 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home, with significant variation across cities and industries. These jobs typically pay more than jobs that cannot be done at home and account for 46% of all US wages. Applying our occupational classification to 85 other countries reveals that lower-income economies have a lower share of jobs that can be done at home.
Keywords
Merge (version control)Labour economicsEconomicsDemographic economicsBusinessSocial distanceCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Computer science
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Publication Info
- Year
- 2020
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 189
- Pages
- 104235-104235
- Citations
- 1897
- Access
- Closed
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Cite This
Jonathan I. Dingel,
Brent Neiman
(2020).
How many jobs can be done at home?.
Journal of Public Economics
, 189
, 104235-104235.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104235
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104235
- PMID
- 32834177
- PMCID
- PMC7346841