What mandates? Data shows WA workers aren’t rushing back to the office

Even as more office workers are leaving their homes as employers issue return-to-office mandates, Washington workers are still far more likely to work remotely than the national average. 

Plans to revive Seattle’s downtown hinge on a robust office return, in part because small businesses catering to office workers have struggled since the pandemic emptied offices around the city.

Before the pandemic, remote workers made up 6.3% of the state’s workforce, a bit higher than the national average of 5.7%, researchers with the state Employment Security Department found in the agency’s 2022 Labor Market and Economic report. By 2021, that proportion had jumped to 24.2% — significantly more than the 17.9% reported nationally.

More recently, more than 1 in 3 Washingtonians were on a hybrid work schedule or were totally virtual, well above the national average of more than 1 in 4, according to data from the Census Pulse survey taken from late July to early August. 

“Given the state’s high concentration of workers in office-based industries like software, streaming, web services and corporate offices, this is not surprising,” said regional labor economist Scott Bailey, one of the authors of the recently released state report.

A year ago, the state had a similar share of remote workers, though the percentage of those fully virtual was slightly higher.

The state’s telecommuting workers are concentrated in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area, tracking with the concentration of tech companies in the state. About 40% of the region’s labor force works from home at least one day a week, according to the latest data from the Census Pulse survey. 

The trends of who gets to work from home reported early in the pandemic continued into 2022, Bailey said in the ESD report, relying on Census Pulse survey data. 

Asian Americans are still most likely to be in remote work, with about half of Asian American workers in the state telecommuting at least once a week. Hispanic and Black workers were least likely to work from home among all racial and ethnic groups. 

Education and household income levels appear to be key determinants of who gets to work from home. More than half of the workforce with a bachelor’s degree or higher reported working from home at least once a week in the state. Similarly, at least 2 in 3 of those reporting a household income of $150,000 or higher reported working from home. 

Remote work was less common among workers with fewer years of formal education and in lower-income brackets. 

Of all age groups, millennials, ages 25 to 39, were most likely to work from home. Workers with children were more likely to work from home than those who didn’t have kids at home, and in a reversal of pre-pandemic trends, more men than women reported working from home.