More Houstonians working from home, U.S. Census shows
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New U.S. Census Bureau data shows the number of Texans working remotely has increased since 2019, another sign of how the pandemic changed the future of work.
By the numbers: Remote workers in Texas jumped by 10.6 percentage points in three years.
- More than 16% of Texans worked remotely in 2021, up from nearly 6% in 2019.
- Across the country, 17.9% of Americans worked primarily from home in 2021 compared with 5.7% in 2019, per the survey results.
Zoom in: Among Houston workers ages 16 and older, 15.6% worked from home in 2021, a large jump from previous years, per the Census data.
- Yes, but: We're nowhere near the top remote U.S. cities. Washington, D.C. had close to 50% of people working primarily from home, while Austin had about 40%.
Why it matters: The newly released survey results provide one of the most reliable indications yet of the pandemic's impact on Americans' work-from-home habits, writes Axios' Erin Doherty.
Between the lines: The Census Bureau said last year that it would not use its one-year estimates from 2020 "because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on data collection."
What they're saying: "Work and commuting are central to American life, so the widespread adoption of working from home is a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Michael Burrows, a statistician in the Census Bureau's Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch.
- "With the number of people who primarily work from home tripling over just a two-year period, the pandemic has very strongly impacted the commuting landscape in the United States."