With stay-at-home orders keeping many Americans in their house, “work from home” has become a hot topic. Countless articles circulate about how to set up a home office and how to get in the zone while kids and pets play in the background. But the truth is that not many Americans can work remotely: Only one-in-three jobs can be completed at home, and they tend to skew white collar, according to a study by SmartAsset. The study rounded up the top 25 and bottom 25 work-from-home-friendly cities. See how yours stacks up.
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. have continued to rise in recent weeks, in turn causing federal, state and local governments to urge their constituents to stay home and practice social distancing. Many companies, in turn, have implemented ongoing work-from-home policies that allow employees to keep socking away their earnings in their savings during this uncertain moment. But the shift to remote work has been uneven, highlighting the disparity between those who can seamlessly continue business as usual from their laptops at the kitchen counter and those unable to perform their job functions from afar.
In this study, SmartAsset uncovered the occupations and cities where the most and fewest workers are able to work from home. Specifically, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules survey along with Census Bureau data, we estimated the percentage of each city’s workforce that can work from home. For details on our data sources and how we put the information together to create our final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section below.