BEERG Newsletter - Future Work: Remote work drove productivity gains

A new study says US economic productivity during the pandemic was driven entirely by companies with remote work capacity. The research co-authored by Robert Gordon (photo) of Northwestern University and Princeton University’s Hassan Sayed indicates that productivity in services businesses with remote working capacity, which includes information and finance, grew 3.3% between the beginning of 2020 and early 2022. 

Meanwhile, growth in the goods sector, in employment including construction and mining, was unchanged and services industries that necessarily required in-person contact contracted by 2.6%. “WFH respondents assess their own productivity as substantially higher than their expectations, which may provide a comparison between productivity of WFH activity compared to the productivity of the same individuals in their previous office environments,” the authors wrote in the paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.