Remote work has increased steadily since the 1960s—and it will likely climb upward for decades, Stanford research finds

The work-from-home evolution over the past three years has had more twists and turns than a rollercoaster. So much so that some might forget employees have allowed remote work in some form since the 1960s. A recent whitepaper from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research titled The Evolution of Working from Home pushes back against the notion that remote work is declining. According to the paper’s authors, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, data suggests that the amount of time people spend working from home in the U.S. Will likely increase with technological advancements—much like in prior decades.

In the 1960s, most Americans who worked from home were in agriculture or roles revolving around craft activities. U.S. Workers spent about 0.4% of their time working remotely in 1965. That percentage increased to 0.6% of workers’ time in 1985, and by the 1990s, remote work had expanded to include white-collar workers. However, it was still limited due to telecommunication hurdles. Remote work often required physically driving or mailing paperwork between home and office locations, write the report’s authors. 

Nonetheless, the percentage of people working remotely grew steadily. Work-from-home rates “roughly doubled every 15 years going back to the 1960s,” according to the report. By 2016, about 4% of workers in the U.S. Reported working remotely, and the amount of time employees spent occasionally working remotely rose as well. In 2019, about 5% of workers’ time was spent at home, quintupling to about 25% by 2023. 

Despite this increase, 60% of Americans are required to work in person, a divide that’s largely driven by educational attainment.

“The biggest single predictor of whether someone gets to work from home is education, with college graduates doing more than twice as much as workers who only have a high school degree,” according to the report. But as technology advances, researchers anticipate “work-friendly innovations” will fuel a new phase of remote work adoption in the next two decades.

During that time, workers can expect to spend 30% to 40% of their weeks working from home. The pandemic has already proven this trend, jumpstarting “a surge in research and development into new hardware and software products to support working from home,” the report says.

If history tells us anything, don’t get too caught up in the work-from-home debate. Instead, prepare to tighten up your remote or hybrid work policies because the practice is here to stay.

Amber Burton
[email protected]
@amberbburton

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