Working at home and choosing when to work were different arrangements in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released on September 24, 2019. Among wage and salary workers in 2017–18, 25 percent worked at home at least occasionally, but only 15 percent had days when they worked exclusively at home. Separately, 57 percent could vary their starting and finishing times. For an employer describing a flexibility policy—or a worker weighing one—the distinction matters: a location benefit does not, by itself, describe control over hours. [S1]

In the 2017–18 U.S. survey, the home-working figures covered a worker’s sole or main job and excluded all self-employed people. BLS reported that 29 percent of wage and salary workers could work at home, while 25 percent actually did so at least occasionally. Neither figure was a count of people working every day from home. Even the 15 percent with days worked entirely at home included people who did that less often than once a week. A policy allowing occasional home working therefore should not be presented as a promise of regular days away from the workplace. [S1]

Payment was another separate question. Among U.S. wage and salary workers who worked at home in 2017–18, 67 percent said that work was paid, 21 percent said it was unpaid and 12 percent did both paid and unpaid work there. Those percentages describe the home-working group, not all workers. They also report respondents’ answers rather than establish whether an employer complied with wage law. For someone assessing an arrangement, the practical question is whether home working replaces paid time at the workplace or adds tasks for which the worker reports no pay. [S1]

In the 2017–18 U.S. survey, a flexible schedule did not necessarily mean frequent choice. Of the wage and salary workers who could vary their starting and finishing times, 35 percent could do so frequently, 46 percent occasionally and 19 percent only rarely. BLS asked about changing those times, not about unrestricted authority to choose every hour of work. An employer can make a flexibility offer more intelligible by specifying how often a change is possible and whether it rests on a formal arrangement; the survey found that 29 percent of workers with flexible schedules had such an arrangement. [S1]

A different BLS release illustrates why the headline percentages cannot be read as a simple trend. The annual 2018 American Time Use Survey results, released on June 19, 2019, found that 24 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked. That measure came from a diary of the preceding day’s activities, covered employed people more broadly and included work at a main or other job. September’s 25 percent concerned whether wage and salary workers ever worked at home in their main job, using 2017–18 supplementary questions. Comparing 24 with 25 does not establish a rise in home working: the populations, reference periods and questions differ. [S1][S2]

For a workplace agreement, the useful comparison is consequently between specific terms: where work may happen, whether an entire day can be spent there, how that time is paid and how often the worker can change hours. The BLS results identify why those terms should not be collapsed into a single flexibility label. They do not measure a particular employer’s productivity or show that any one arrangement resolves a worker’s caring responsibilities. [S1][S2]

Source documents

  1. Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules — 2017-2018https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/flex2_09242019.htm
  2. American Time Use Survey — 2018 Resultshttps://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/atus_06192019.htm