Issue Brief: Shifting Trends in Remote Work
May 23, 2025 / RERI Research Team
Issue Brief: Shifting Trends in Remote Work
Working from home has become increasingly popular in Southwest Florida, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. Employees were asked to work from home to reduce the spread of the virus, but even as time passed and it became safe to return to the office, working from home remained a popular choice. We can observe a substantial increase in the share of remote workers from 2019 to 2023, which has implications for workforce accessibility, infrastructure planning, and economic development. Understanding who is working remotely is vital to assessing the effects of this shift on our labor market.
In this issue brief, we breakdown the share of employees who work remotely by demographic characteristics, migration status, industry, and occupation. To perform our analysis, we used data from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS), an annual survey that collects social, economic, demographic and housing information for the nation. Specifically, we used the 5-year estimates microdata from the IPUMS website. ACS 5-year estimate microdata comes from the IPUMS website, which allows for a customized examination of data for all Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). The U.S. Census Bureau defines PUMAs as “non-overlapping, statistical geographic areas that partition each state or equivalent entity into geographic areas containing no fewer than 100,000 people each”. Because of this definition, the analysis is provided for Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties only, which we refer to as the Southwest Florida Coastal Counties.
The ACS collects information regarding the primary form of transportation a worker typically uses to get to work during the reference week they are being asked about. If a person used multiple forms of transportation, they were asked to provide the one they used most often. One option for respondents was to indicate that they did not have a form of transportation since they worked from home.[Using this information, we are able to extract information from the ACS to learn more about what characteristics make up the working from home population in the Southwest Florida coastal county region and how it has evolved since 2019.
Our findings reveal that the share of employees who worked from home doubled from 2019 to 2023, with the largest increases in industries and occupations that are computer-based—such as finance and insurance, and computer and mathematical roles. Furthermore, among individuals moving into the Southwest Florida Coastal Counties, remote work gained popularity from 2019 to 2022, before dipping slightly in 2023. This decline is specific to in-migrants and may not be statistically significant year over year, but it could signal an early shift in employer practices, with more organizations implementing return-to-office mandates or hybrid work models.
Looking ahead in 2024 and 2025, stricter in-person policies could narrow access to employment—particularly for older adults, caregivers, and individuals with disabilities. A pullback in remote work risks shrinking the talent pool, lowering workforce participation, and slowing the economic momentum remote work has helped drive.
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Issue Brief: Shifting Trends in Remote Work
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