More than 1 in 20 Americans typically work from home, new 2018 data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows. Telework, or remote work, has overtaken public transit as the third-most-popular commuting method in the country, The Washington Post reports.
It remains nowhere near the most popular American commute, however. Three in four workers, or more than 111 million people, still drive solo to the office or factory each day.
Carpooling comes in second, well above working from home. The share of Americans who carpool has lost ground since the Great Recession, though it remains more popular than walking, biking or taking a cab.
Moreover, a separate Labor Department release announced that 15% of employees work at home for at least one full day each week, and 25% work from home occasionally. A third of them—if on an hourly salary—weren’t paid for their time working at home.
Hispanic workers are half as likely to work from home as non-Hispanic ones, and black workers are much less likely to work at home than white or Asian ones. Work-from-home arrangements are more common in more-skilled professions and the probability of working from home increases with age. Workers over 65 work from home at twice the average rate, Census Bureau data shows. Read the full story.
