Ability to work from home: evidence from two surveys and implications for the labor market in the COVID-19 pandemic

This article examines the relationship between workers’ ability to work at home, as captured in job characteristics measured by the Occupational Information Network, and the actual incidence of working at home, as measured by the American Time Use Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. For occupations in which telework is feasible, the article also estimates the proportion of workers who actually teleworked for a substantial amount of time prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The article concludes by examining recent (April 2020) employment estimates from the Current Population Survey, aiming to gauge how the initial employment effects of the pandemic differed between occupations in which telework is feasible and occupations in which it is not.