Labour economics

Economics

Computer science

Business

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Merge (version control)

Demographic economics

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Information retrieval

Medicine

Social distance

Disease

Pathology

Journal of Public Economics

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.

How many jobs can be done at home?