The Covid-19 pandemic continues, and just as people speculate about how much it will change our cities, there are claims of historic changes in the job market. A blog from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management tells us “the workplace is never going to look the same” as a result of the pandemic.
But just as with cities, this is an overstatement. We don’t fully know what long-term changes the pandemic will cause in the labor market. But pre-pandemic labor market inequalities remain high and have even worsened by some measures, especially for those in lower-paying jobs.
We know the pandemic affects workers, occupations, and industries in very distinct ways. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 14.4% of all prime-age workers (25 years and older) did some teleworking in September because of the pandemic. That’s significantly lower than May 2020’s high point of 35%, but still higher than pre-pandemic teleworking numbers.
But working at home isn’t spread evenly across the workforce. Pandemic or no pandemic, teleworking is highly correlated with education. Only 5.3% of workers whose highest credential is a high school degree did any pandemic-related teleworking in September. But 23.9% of those with a B.A. or higher did.
That’s because teleworking is more feasible in some industries and occupations than others. Industries like manufacturing, health care, education, agriculture, construction, warehousing, transportation, personal services like hair salons, and hotels and restaurants often require personal contact and face-to-face interaction, with work processes and equipment that can’t be done over the internet. In contrast, some service industries like finance, information and data processing, and accounting can go remote fairly easily.
But just because jobs can be done through telework doesn’t mean they automatically will be. Analysts focus not only on potential, but on “takeup rates”—that is, of jobs where you could telework, how many people actually do? And the takeup is much less than the potential.
Earlier BLS research found actual takeup rates ranging from around 10% (construction) to between 35% and 40% (information and professional services). This echoes a 2018 survey for federal workers, where there has been a strong telework policy for some time. Although 42% of federal employees were eligible to do some telework, only around 22% did some work at home, and full-time teleworkers were a much lower share.
So teleworking has grown in importance, but it remains concentrated among professionals with higher education, in specific service-oriented industries. And although many workers say they don’t want to go back to the office (over 30% in some surveys), experts think many will return.
There is some evidence that office-based employees get promoted faster. Workers with “hybrid” schedules—some time in the office and some teleworking—need to coordinate their office time with colleagues who are important to their efforts, and with their supervisors who have a big say in promotions and work assignments.
So far, we’ve mostly talked about higher-paid professionals in relation to teleworking. But low-wage workers—disproportionately with lower educational credentials and more likely to be non-white—have much less access to telework.
A Brookings Institution study in July found that the pandemic “hit low-wage workers much harder” than higher-paid ones, and also that “low-wage jobs have been the slowest to return.” Their analysis showed that low-wage workers made up 43% of the pre-pandemic workforce but were 52% of those displaced.
Of course, low-wage workers and their families have fewer financial resources to fall back on. President Biden’s big and vital American Rescue Plan after the pandemic helped buffer these negative impacts (and also fostered a faster economic recovery), but those funds are largely spent. (If President Biden’s two major investment packages are enacted, that will help some, although they won’t fully replace the earlier funding.)
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) tracks hardship associated with Covid-19. CBPP reports that 12% of adults with children reported a lack of sufficient food, 16% had insufficient funds to pay rent or housing costs, and close to 30% didn’t have enough funds to pay for normal household expenses. The percentages, not surprisingly, are higher for Black and Latino families.
Adults in households relying on low-wage jobs are the most affected. We lost a staggering 22 million jobs in the first two months after the pandemic, and we are still around 5 million jobs below that pre-pandemic high. But CBPP reports that the number of high-wage jobs has virtually recovered, while low-wage jobs are still 5.3% below the pre-pandemic level.
So there are telework increases among higher-educated, higher-paid workers. But for low-wage workers in many industries, the labor market looks sadly similar to pre-pandemic patterns—inadequate pay, not enough jobs, and economic hardship.
Rather than the pandemic “transforming” the workplace, it seems to be exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. It will take building worker power through unions and other means, and active government policies, to really change our workplaces for the better.