Work Tasks That Can Be Done From Home: Evidence on the Variation Within and Across Occupations and Industries
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Abstract
Using large geographically representative surveys from the US and UK, we document the variation in the percentage of tasks workers can do from home both within and across occupations and industries. We find that the share of tasks that can be done from home is not constant across workers within occupations or industries, i.e. within an occupation or industry, the information about the distribution of the share of tasks that can be done from home is systematic. The standard deviation of the share of tasks that can be done from home and the share of people reporting to be able to do all or none of their tasks from home within occupations, industries, and occupation-industry pairs is consistent across countries and survey waves. We argue that our measures are important inputs for models considering the possibility to work for home, in particular for those estimating the impact of the pandemic as well as for designing policies targeted at reopening the economy.