Tapping Business and Household Surveys to Sharpen Our View of Work from Home

Abstract: The Business Trends and Outlook Survey collected detailed data on work from home (WFH) practices at more than 150,000 American firms from November 2024 to January 2025. These data fill a key gap by providing timely business-level measures of WFH for the U.S. economy and complementing parallel data collection efforts in household-level surveys. We document four main results. First, employees WFH one day per week on average across firms, ranging from 2.8 days per week in the Information sector to 0.1 days in the Accommodation and Food Services sector. Second, looking five years ahead, businesses expect WFH rates at their own organizations to remain at one day per week, on average. Third, the most common view of businesses is that productivity is similar for WFH and onsite work. Seven percent of firms say onsite work is more productive, while two percent say WFH is more productive. Fourth, 70 percent of firms do not monitor whether their employees meet onsite work requirements, and 75 percent do not track how much their employees WFH. These results confirm that WFH is an enduring feature of the U.S. economic landscape, with massive variation in its extent across employees, businesses, and sectors. These lessons also serve as a starting point for enhancing WFH-related content in the American Community Survey and other household surveys.

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