Is remote work declining? What the latest data show

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a surge of people working from home. From 2019 to 2021, the rate of fully remote work increased from just 6 percent to almost 18 percent in the United States, according to a previous analysis of census data by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.¹

While many employers have been calling workers back to the office, remote work has nonetheless remained sticky. The share of workers who work hybrid schedules, where time is spent both at home and the office, has increased slightly. Meanwhile, the share that work in fully remote positions has only seen a slight decline.

Little change in last two years

Data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey reveal that nearly 22 percent of U.S. workers age 16 and older were working from home at least some of the time in 2025. That number is down just under 1 percentage point from 2024, despite the upturn of return-to-office announcements.

The share of workers by type of remote work schedule—hybrid or fully remote—has also remained mostly stable. The share of hybrid workers in the workforce slightly increased in 2025, while the share of fully remote workers shrunk slightly. Time spent working at home also didn’t change much. Average hours worked remotely in the last week declined from 27 hours at the start of 2025 to 26 hours a year later.

Remote work rates still vary widely across the country (see Figure 2). Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, and Colorado have the highest remote rates in the country, while states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas have some of the lowest.

Some states have more fully remote workers than hybrid workers and vice versa. For example, Colorado ranked second in the nation for its share of fully remote workers, but seventh in the nation for its share of hybrid workers. Among states in the Ninth District, Minnesota had the highest share of hybrid workers, while Montana had the highest share of fully remote workers (see Figure 3).

Shifts in the remote workforce

Some of the variety across states is due to industry composition and educational attainment. Professional services, finance, health care, and social assistance sectors have the highest concentrations of all remote workers, given their size and/or propensity for remote work.

Although return-to-office mandates have picked up, when some industries shed remote workers, others gain them. From 2024 to 2025, sectors like public administration and information saw their share of the nation’s total remote working population fall slightly while professional services and health care saw some growth, due in part to stronger overall employment growth in these sectors.

Changes in the remote work rate within sectors were more dramatic (see Figure 4). The share of remote workers within public administration dropped 6 percentage points from 2024 to 2025. Closely behind, the information sector’s remote work rate dropped about 5 percentage points.

The notable decline in the share of remote workers in public administration jobs is likely the result of changes in policy at both the state and federal level in 2025. At the start of the year, an executive order required federal agencies to move employees back to fully in-person schedules. Several state governments followed suit with various mandates for their employees. This includes Minnesota, which started requiring state employees to report to the office for at least half of their time.

Declines in the share of remote workers within the information sector also track with return-to-office announcements made by several large tech companies this past year; Amazon and Meta’s Instagram began requiring many of their workers to return to the office full time starting in 2025.

Some of the recent pullback in remote work by companies has been seen as a reaction to a changing labor market. Remote work can be used as perk or benefit to attract talent, especially in times when jobs are plentiful but workers are few. In the last couple of years, however, the number of job openings shrank, and so has workers’ leverage to negotiate more flexible schedules.

As the supply and demand of jobs and workers in the economy change, remote work will likely continue to evolve. But recently, this evolution has proven to be slow.

Methodology

Estimates were calculated using U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey data from IPUMS CPS. The total number of employed respondents includes respondents 16 years or older who worked for pay in the last week at the time the survey was conducted (“10” in the EMPSTAT variable). All estimates were calculated using the final person-level weight (WTFINL).

Hybrid and fully remote work rates were calculated by taking the percent of time worked from home in the last week (TELWRKHR) as percent of actual hours worked in (AHRSWORKT). Those who worked 100 percent of their actual hours at home in the week prior were considered fully remote workers. Those who worked greater than or equal to 10 percent but less than 100 percent of their total hours from home were considered hybrid workers. The 10 percent threshold for hybrid workers was created to eliminate those who spend most of their time on-site, following the thresholds established by Gallup.

Endnotes

1 Previous analysis of remote work trends by the Minneapolis Fed has relied on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Current Household Pulse Survey (now the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey). There are differences in remote work rates across these surveys given different methodologies. The Current Population Survey was used for this analysis given the recency of the data available. Data from before 2024 in the Current Population Survey may not be comparable due to changes in the questionnaire language that began in December 2023.