1 Introduction
Evaluating the economic impact of “social distancing” measures taken to arrest the spread of COVID-19 raises a number of fundamental questions about the modern economy: How many jobs can be performed at home? What share of total wages are paid to such jobs? How does the scope for working from home vary across cities or industries? To answer these questions, we classify the feasibility of working at home for all occupations and merge this classification with occupational employment counts for the United States. Our feasibility measure is based on responses to two Occupational Information Network (O*NET) surveys covering “work context” and “generalized work activities.” For example, if answers to those surveys reveal that an occupation requires daily “work outdoors” or that “operating vehicles, mechanized devices, or equipment” is very important to that occupation’s performance, we determine that the occupation cannot be performed from home.1 We merge this classification of O*NET occupations with information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the prevalence of each occupation in the aggregate as well as in particular metropolitan statistical areas and 2-digit NAICS industries
2 Results
Our classification implies that 34 percent of U.S. jobs can plausibly be performed at home. We obtain our estimate by identifying job characteristics that clearly rule out the possibility of working entirely from home, neglecting many characteristics that would make working from home difficult.2
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