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Remote work across jobs, companies and space

Author

Listed:
  • Bloom, Nicholas
  • Davis, Steven J.
  • Hansen, Stephen
  • Lambert, Peter John
  • Sadun, Raffaella
  • Taska, Bledi
Abstract
The pandemic catalyzed an enduring shift to remote work. To measure and characterize this shift, we examine more than 250 million job vacancy postings across five English-speaking countries. Our measurements rely on a state-of-the-art language-processing framework that we fit, test, and refine using 30,000 human classifications. We achieve 99% accuracy in flagging job postings that advertise hybrid or fully remote work, greatly outperforming dictionary methods and also outperforming other machine-learning methods. From 2019 to early 2023, the share of postings that say new employees can work remotely one or more days per week rose more than three-fold in the U.S and by a factor of five or more in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. These developments are highly non-uniform across and within cities, industries, occupations, and companies. Even when zooming in on employers in the same industry competing for talent in the same occupations, we find large differences in the share of job postings that explicitly offer remote work.

Suggested Citation

  • Bloom, Nicholas & Davis, Steven J. & Hansen, Stephen & Lambert, Peter John & Sadun, Raffaella & Taska, Bledi, 2023. "Remote work across jobs, companies and space," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121302, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:121302
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    2. Cevat Giray Aksoy & Jose Maria Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Mathias Dolls & Pablo Zarate, 2022. "Working from Home Around the World," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 53(2 (Fall)), pages 281-360.
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    Cited by:

    1. Pablo Ottonello & Wenting Song & Sebastian Sotelo, 2024. "An Anatomy of Firms’ Political Speech," Staff Working Papers 24-37, Bank of Canada.
    2. Nicolás Forteza & Elvira Prades & Marc Roca, 2024. "Analysing the VAT Cut Pass-Through in Spain Using Web Scraped Supermarket Data and Machine Learning," Working papers 951, Banque de France.
    3. José María Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "The Evolution of Work from Home," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 23-50, Fall.
    4. Zarate, Pablo & Dolls, Mathias & Davis, Steven & Bloom, Nicholas & Barrero, Jose Maria & Aksoy, Cevat Giray, 2024. "Why Does Working from Home Vary Across Countries and People?," CEPR Discussion Papers 19003, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Abi Adams-Prassl & Tom Waters & Maria Balgova & Matthias Qian, 2023. "Firm concentration & job design: the case of schedule flexible work arrangements," IFS Working Papers W23/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    6. Steven J. Davis, 2024. "The Big Shift in Working Arrangements: Eight Ways Unusual," NBER Working Papers 32363, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Lee, Kangoh, 2023. "Working from home as an economic and social change: A review," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Alexander Bick & Adam Blandin & Aidan Caplan & Tristan Caplan, 2024. "Measuring Trends in Work From Home: Evidence from Six U.S. Datasets," Working Papers 2024-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. Lorenz Gschwent & Bjorn Hammarfelt & Martin Karlsson & Mathias Kifmann, 2024. "The Rise of Health Economics: Transforming the Landscape of Economic Research," Papers 2410.06313, arXiv.org.
    10. Richard Audoly & Manudeep Bhuller & Tore Adam Reiremo, 2024. "The Pay and Non-Pay Content of Job Ads," Staff Reports 1124, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; hybrid working; employment; Consolidator Grant 864863; STICERD PhD research grant; e Booth School of Business;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C50 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - General
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location

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