Teleworking, Travel, and Quality of Life Before, During, and After the Pandemic Across Different Population Groups in the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the imposed social distancing measures led many people to adopt telecommuting arrangements — working from home or teleworking — on a large scale. A recent survey found that, between February and May 2020, over one-third of the American labor force swapped in-person work with telework, which increased the share of remote working to nearly 50 percent of the nation’s workforce. These massive changes in work arrangements may have long-term impacts, including how work is organized, where work is performed, and how activities and travel are scheduled. If telecommuting continues it is important to know whether it results in less travel, less commute stress, and consequently a happier life. This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on telecommuting (working from home) and travel during the first year of the pandemic in the United States (from March 2020 to March 2021), with a particular focus on examining the variation in impact across different geographies. The 50 U.S. states are divided into several clusters based on their geographic and telecommuting characteristics, including 6 small urban states, 8 large urban states, 18 urban–rural mixed states, and 17 rural states. Combining data from multiple sources, this study finds that nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce worked from home during the pandemic, which was six times higher than the pre-pandemic period, and that these fractions varied across the clusters. More people worked from home in urban states compared with rural states. As well as telecommuting, several activity travel trends were also examined across these clusters: reduction in the number of activity visits; changes in the number of trips and vehicle-miles traveled; and mode usage. Findings show there was a greater reduction in the number of workplace and nonworkplace visits in urban states compared with rural states. The number of trips in all distance categories decreased except for long-distance trips, which increased during the summer and fall of 2020. The changes in overall mode usage frequency were similar across urban and rural states with a large drop in ride-hailing and transit use.