Working from home after COVID-19

23 November 2022

1:00pm-2:00pm

Summary

In this Digit Futures talk, Pawel Adrjan discusses the adoption of remote work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a novel, high-frequency database of job postings that advertise remote work in 20 countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America from January 2019 to the present, classified into 55 occupational categories. Exploiting changes in pandemic severity across countries and differences in the feasibility of telework across occupations, the research finds that increases in pandemic severity substantially raise advertised telework but declines have no effect on advertised telework. Even though technologies that enable effective telework – such as rapid broadband internet, file sharing via the cloud and video calls – had been available for many years, the pandemic may have triggered path dependence in their adoption. Public policies will need to adapt to make the most of permanently higher telework in terms of productivity and worker well-being.

Bio

Pawel Adrjan is Director of EMEA Economic Research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, where he develops actionable insights on the labour market to help businesses and policy makers make better decisions. He is also a Research Fellow in Economics at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Over the last two decades, Pawel has worked in Europe and the US, holding senior positions in risk management at Goldman Sachs and Barclays in New York and London. He holds degrees from the University of
Pennsylvania and the University of Warwick and a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Event