Rabiul Islam, Ph.D. and Jean-Daniel Saphores, Ph.D
University of California, Irvine
The Issue
There was a sharp increase in telecommuting, which reduced vehicle miles traveled (VMT), decreased energy use, and lowered emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHG). Telecommuting may offer numerous other co-benefits, including increasing the worker pool, decreasing time and costs associated with travel, improving work-life balance, and decreasing stress, and may stimulate greater use of non-motorized and active modes of travel (e.g., walking, biking, taking transit). However, it may also affect remote workers’ opportunities for promotion, ties with colleagues, health, and even work productivity.
Quantifying changes in telecommuting is important for updating sustainable community strategies and gauging telecommuting’s likely contribution to meeting California’s GHG reduction targets. Analyzing telecommuting frequency for different socio-economic groups and occupations should also help policymakers understand the long-term impacts of the pandemic on different segments of the labor market.
Key Research Findings
The post-pandemic rise in telecommuting may be more modest than expected. An additional 4.2% of California workers may engage in some level of telecommuting post-pandemic, which is substantial but much less than reported by other studies performed during the pandemic using non-probability samples. Regarding socio-economic characteristics, our results show some generational differences, but no gender and race effects. Other variables were considered as well, and are detailed both in our Policy Brief and our Report.
Policy Considerations
Employers may consider offering a mix of in-person and remote work, which would allow workers to maintain or create ties with colleagues while reducing their commuting expenses. While providing monetary incentives for telecommuting can run counter to state and local tax breaks designed to attract well-paying jobs, many of these agreements, which were concluded well before COVID-19, do not consider that some of the workers at these sites could work remotely out-of-state, which would sharply limit the intended benefits of these tax breaks. These agreements should be revisited to reward firms that hire local telecommuters.
More Information
For more information about this research, please contact Jean-Daniel Saphores at saphores@uci.edu.
This research was made possible by funding received by the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies (UC ITS) from the State of California through the Public Transportation Account and the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (Senate Bill 1). The UC ITS is a network of faculty, research and administrative staff, and students dedicated to advancing the state of the art in transportation engineering, planning, and policy for the people of California. Established by the Legislature in 1947, the UC ITS has branches at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UCLA.
Project ID UC-ITS-2022-43 | DOI: 10.7922/G2Z899RR