The Allocation of Time and Remote Work

The proportion of employees who work remotely has surged from under 5% to over 60% between January to March 2020, converging to roughly 28% of days working from home versus in the office as of 2023. Motivated by these large structural shifts in the nature of work, this paper studies the allocation of time among workers across jobs that vary in their remote intensity. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey between 2019 and 2023, I document three main results. First, time allocated to leisure increased and to work decreased among more remote jobs with little change in home production, shopping, or childcare. Time allocated to commuting declined, but only accounts for a small portion of the declines in labor supply. Second, these changes were concentrated among males, singles, and those without children. Third, these declines in labor supply are not associated with productivity declines; sectors with greater remote work intensity exhibited greater productivity growth.