Working from Home after COVID-19: What Do Job Postings Tell Us?

We study the adoption of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We assemble a novel high-frequency database of job postings advertising work from home (telework) covering 20 countries and 55 occupation categories, using data from the online job site Indeed. Exploiting changes in pandemic severity across countries and differences in the feasibility of telework across occupations in a triple differences identification strategy, we find that (i) increases in pandemic severity substantially raise advertised telework but (ii) declines have no effect on advertised telework. Overall, these results imply that the pandemic has permanently unlocked the potential to telework, especially in high-skilled occupations where telework is most feasible. Public policies will need to adapt to make the most of permanently higher telework in terms of productivity and worker well-being.