Jobs’ Amenability to Working from Home: Evidence from Skills Surveys for 53 Countries

Abstract

We use skills surveys from 53 countries to estimate jobs’ amenability to working from home (WFH). Our measure combines data on self-reported jobs’ characteristics and home internet access into a standardized measure. We find that jobs’ amenability to WFH increases with economic development. Women, college graduates, and salaried and formal workers have jobs that are more amenable to WFH than the average. The opposite holds for workers in hotels and restaurants, construction, agriculture, and commerce. We validate our measure using longitudinal data from Chile and showing that WFH amenability correlates negatively with job losses between 2019 and 2020 and positively with the observed share of workers who worked from home in 2020. Finally, occupations explain less than one third of the variability in the WFH measure and its components, highlighting the importance of using individual-level data to assess jobs’ amenability to WFH. JEL Classification Codes: J22; J61; O30