If you’ve been wondering how long work-at-home jobs will continue to be a trend in the American workforce, a recent Gallup update of monthly employment trends might answer that question for you. According to Gallup’s September 2021 findings, 45% of workers in the US who held part-time jobs were working from home either all of the time (25%) or part-time (20%). These figures are consistent with those from both July and August of 2021.
But that’s not all. The study also showed that work-from-home jobs are especially commonplace among white-collar professions, with 67% of those employees reporting that they were working remotely either full-time (41%) or part-time (26%) as of September 2021. And, probably not surprisingly, those with jobs that typically involve person-to-person contact weren’t as likely to be working from home. For example, only 48% of educators worked from home and just 35% of healthcare professionals worked remotely as of September 2021. Still, those numbers represent a substantially higher percentage than was present before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even more interesting is what employees have to say about remote work. In Gallup’s State of the Workforce study, conducted in early summer of 2021, fully 91% of US employees who were currently working full- or part-time from home wanted to continue doing so post-COVID. And 54% would prefer to work remotely on a part-time basis, splitting their time between working at home and working in a conventional office setting. The same poll showed that 37% of employees preferred working from home full-time, while only 9% wanted to return to working in an office on a full-time basis. Respondents gave several reasons why they preferred to work remotely at least part of the time, including: better work-life balance; improved wellbeing; and not needing to commute back and forth from home to office.
In fact, employees are so enamored with their work-from-home jobs that they were willing to look elsewhere if their employers don’t offer them the flexibility they desired after the pandemic. Gallup’s findings show that 3 in 10 employees currently working from home said that they are extremely likely to look for another job if their employers stop allowing them to work remotely.
When asked what their companies intend to do in the future, 76% of workers responding to the survey said that their company plans to allow remote work on at least a part-time basis for the foreseeable future. Sixty-one percent reported that they were planning to work from home at least part of the time over the course of the following year, and 27% expected to be working remotely full-time.
The findings of the Gallup polls confirm what we’ve known all along: work-from-home jobs are here to stay! Whether you allow your employees the flexibility to work remotely on a full-time basis, or just let them work from home part-time, it’s vital that you utilize the best tools available for managing a remote staff. MySammy is a cloud-based software specifically designed for managers of remote workers. Using our state-of-the-art technology, you can easily measure the productivity levels of your work-from-home employees and do so without blocking websites or invading the privacy of your workers. Sign up for your free trial today!
