Where Are People Working Remotely?

Remote work has become the norm for many during the past few years. Although offices are filling up again, they’ll probably never reach prepandemic levels. So, how many people are working from home, and where are they doing it?

To figure that out, a report from CoworkingMag analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which found that about 22.5 million Americans “worked primarily from home” in 2023 — roughly 13.8 percent of the entire work force. Unsurprisingly, the number shot up in 2021, when 17.9 percent of workers were remote. The total has receded since then, but is still more than triple the amount from a decade ago.

To find the cities with the largest shares of remote workers, researchers examined 109 metropolitan areas with populations of at least 500,000. In Austin, Texas, about a quarter of the work force was remote in 2023. Raleigh, N.C., wasn’t too far behind at 24.5 percent, followed by Denver at 22.3 percent.

While the largest metropolitan areas naturally tend to have more remote workers overall, it was mostly midsize metros — those with populations under 1 million — that saw the largest gains in the percentage of remote workers. Smaller cities often have a lower cost of living, making them a logical choice for workers who don’t have to go to an office. Omaha had the largest growth from 2014 to 2023, from 2.9 percent to 13.5 percent of the work force. In Akron, Ohio, the share rose from 3.2 percent to 14.8 percent.

Some larger metros also had big gains in their share of remote workers over the decade. In Washington, D.C., it increased from 5.1 percent in 2014 to 21.9 percent in 2023, the fourth largest increase found. In San Francisco, it grew from 6.2 percent to 20.5 percent.

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