Business

Who Still Works From Home?

Published

2 years ago

March 8, 2024

The American workplace’s experiment with remote work happened, effectively, overnight: With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, more than half of workers began working from home at least part of the time, according to Gallup. But the shift to a permanent hybrid-work reality has been gradual, with periods of tension as workers across white-collar industries pushed against executives’ return-to-office orders.

Those battles have largely come to an end, and workplaces have reached a new hybrid-work status quo. Roughly one-tenth of workers are cobbling together a combination of work in the office and from home, and a similar portion are working entirely remotely.

This population of hybrid and remote workers in the United States doesn’t quite mirror the larger population of workers: Government data shows they tend to have more education and are more often white and Asian.

Each square here represents 50,000 workers between the ages of 18 and 64. In 2023, about 143 million people in that age range were working in the United States.

A graphic shows a grid of squares representing 143 million workers between 18 and 64.

Roughly 80 percent of those work fully in person. The remaining work either a hybrid schedule or fully remote.

The grid is then split into three sections with color, showing that roughly 115 million of the total 143 million workers are working in person, while about 14 million work a hybrid schedule and another 15 million work fully remote.

If we look at all workers by their level of education, the biggest group of workers have no college education.

The squares are then arranged by education level, showing that the largest group of workers, more than 47 million, have no college education.

But if we focus on just those who work at home all or some of the time, college educated workers become the most prominent. Working from home is, for the most part, a luxury for the highly educated.

All of the squares representing workers who work in person fly out of the graphic, leaving only workers who work either hybrid or fully remote. The largest group left is now workers with a bachelor’s degree, 12.5 million, followed by workers with graduate degrees, another eight million.

The pandemic laid bare inequalities in the American economy. White-collar workers were in many cases able to do their jobs safely at home, but lower-income workers often had to continue to work in person, even when health risks were highest. And now that the public health emergency is over, that workplace divide — who gets the benefits of remote flexibility and who does not — has become entrenched.

White and Asian workers are more likely to work from home

Share of fully remote and hybrid workers who identify as a given race or ethnicity vs. the same group’s share of the entire work force

White

Asian

Hispanic

Black

Other

60%

Hispanic workers and Black workers are underrepresented in remote work.

Only 10% of remote

20% of all

share of all workers

The divide in who gets the flexibility to work remotely also reflects the country’s racial inequalities. Because white and Asian workers are more likely to hold office jobs, they are more likely to have the opportunity to work remotely part or all of the time. Black and Hispanic workers, meanwhile, more frequently hold jobs in food service, construction, retail, health care and other fields that require them to be in person.

The youngest workers are working from home less often

Share of fully remote and hybrid workers who fall in each age group vs. the same group’s share of the entire work force

Under 25

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

25%

share of all workers

When employers were first mounting their return-to-office battles, many assumed that their youngest employees would be the toughest to persuade to come back. But today, young people make up a greater share of those working in person than their share of the total work force.

That is partly because a smaller share of Americans under 25 have completed college degrees. Many work in jobs like food service that cannot be done remotely. But that is not the whole story: Even among college graduates, workers in their 20s are more likely to be in the office full time than their older colleagues. That suggests that young workers are embracing the benefits of in-person work: socialization, mentorship and face time with the boss. The potential downsides of fixed office schedules may also matter less to them: Relatively fewer young workers might have children (or aging parents) at home, making remote flexibility less of a priority.

More women work remotely, but it’s complicated.

Remote work also breaks down along gender lines — though it does not lend itself to a simple narrative.

Overall, women are more likely than men to work remotely. That’s partly because more women have college degrees, so more of them are in the kind of professional jobs in which flexible arrangements have become the norm. Even among those without college degrees, women are more likely to work at a desk in an administrative or customer support role, while men more often work in construction, manufacturing and other jobs that can only be done in person.

Looking narrowly at just college graduates, remote work patterns for women and men look more evenly distributed, with men slightly more likely to work remotely than women. But there’s one place where the pattern looks different: among parents with young children.

Parents have been some of the biggest winners in the flexible-work era. Remote flexibility made more feasible the constant juggling of professional and caretaking obligations. But it is mothers, not fathers, who appear to be taking the most advantage of workplace flexibility, whether out of choice or necessity.

Share of fully remote and hybrid college-educated workers who have children or not, by gender

College-educated men

With no kids

With young kids

With older kids

60%

vs. share of all working college-educated men

College-educated women

With no kids

With young kids

With older kids

Mothers of young kids are more likely to work from home than other women.

Note: Young kids are those 5 years old or younger.

Among college-educated men, having children does not make much difference to whether they work at home or in person. Among women, it’s a different story. Mothers of young children are much more likely to work remotely than women without children or mothers of older children.

When possible, disabled workers often choose to go fully remote

Fully remote and hybrid work often get talked about in the same breath. But in some cases, the implications are different.

For many workers with disabilities, the normalization of remote work has offered an opportunity to avoid energy-draining commutes and offices that are not designed to accommodate their needs. For others, it has opened up pathways into industries that were previously difficult to break into.

But those gains come primarily from fully remote work, not the hybrid model that has come to dominate some industries. Workers with disabilities are 22 percent more likely to work fully remotely than otherwise similar workers without disabilities, but only slightly more likely to work a hybrid schedule, according to research from the Economic Innovation Group. Workers with disabilities that limit mobility, such as those who use wheelchairs, were particularly likely to benefit from the opportunity to work entirely from home.

Employers should “understand the significant difference between full-remote and hybrid-remote,” the researchers wrote. “A labor market that includes a greater number of full-remote jobs will open the door for far more otherwise qualified workers.”

Methodology

The data in this article comes from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of 60,000 U.S. households conducted by the Census Bureau. Respondents are asked how many hours they worked the previous week, and how many of those hours they teleworked or worked from home. “Fully remote” workers are those who worked all of their hours remotely; “hybrid” workers are those who worked some but not all of their hours remotely. Respondents who were not employed, or who did not work at all in the previous week, are excluded. Data shown is for calendar year 2023. Figures are rounded throughout.

Business

U.S. Space Force awards $1.6 billion in contracts to South Bay satellite builders

Published

24 minutes ago

December 20, 2025

Press Room

U.S. Space Force awards .6 billion in contracts to South Bay satellite builders

The U.S. Space Force announced Friday it has awarded satellite contracts with a combined value of about $1.6 billion to Rocket Lab in Long Beach and to the Redondo Beach Space Park campus of Northrop Grumman.

The contracts by the Space Development Agency will fund the construction by each company of 18 satellites for a network in development that will provide warning of advanced threats such as hypersonic missiles.

Northrop Grumman has been awarded contracts for prior phases of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a planned network of missile defense and communications satellites in low Earth orbit.

The contract announced Friday is valued at $764 million, and the company is now set to deliver a total of 150 satellites for the network.

The $805-million contract awarded to Rocket Lab is its largest to date. It had previously been awarded a $515 million contract to deliver 18 communications satellites for the network.

Founded in 2006 in New Zealand, the company builds satellites and provides small-satellite launch services for commercial and government customers with its Electron rocket. It moved to Long Beach in 2020 from Huntington Beach and is developing a larger rocket.

“This is more than just a contract. It’s a resounding affirmation of our evolution from simply a trusted launch provider to a leading vertically integrated space prime contractor,” said Rocket Labs founder and chief executive Peter Beck in online remarks.

The company said it could eventually earn up to $1 billion due to the contract by supplying components to other builders of the satellite network.

Also awarded contracts announced Friday were a Lockheed Martin group in Sunnyvalle, Calif., and L3Harris Technologies of Fort Wayne, Ind. Those contracts for 36 satellites were valued at nearly $2 billion.

Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, acting director of the Space Development Agency, said the contracts awarded “will achieve near-continuous global coverage for missile warning and tracking” in addition to other capabilities.

Northrop Grumman said the missiles are being built to respond to the rise of hypersonic missiles, which maneuver in flight and require infrared tracking and speedy data transmission to protect U.S. troops.

Beck said that the contracts reflects Rocket Labs growth into an “industry disruptor” and growing space prime contractor.

Business

California-based company recalls thousands of cases of salad dressing over ‘foreign objects’

Published

12 hours ago

December 19, 2025

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California-based company recalls thousands of cases of salad dressing over ‘foreign objects’

A California food manufacturer is recalling thousands of cases of salad dressing distributed to major retailers over potential contamination from “foreign objects.”

The company, Irvine-based Ventura Foods, recalled 3,556 cases of the dressing that could be contaminated by “black plastic planting material” in the granulated onion used, according to an alert issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ventura Foods voluntarily initiated the recall of the product, which was sold at Costco, Publix and several other retailers across 27 states, according to the FDA.

None of the 42 locations where the product was sold were in California.

Ventura Foods said it issued the recall after one of its ingredient suppliers recalled a batch of onion granules that the company had used n some of its dressings.

“Upon receiving notice of the supplier’s recall, we acted with urgency to remove all potentially impacted product from the marketplace. This includes urging our customers, their distributors and retailers to review their inventory, segregate and stop the further sale and distribution of any products subject to the recall,” said company spokesperson Eniko Bolivar-Murphy in an emailed statement. “The safety of our products is and will always be our top priority.”

The FDA issued its initial recall alert in early November. Costco also alerted customers at that time, noting that customers could return the products to stores for a full refund. The affected products had sell-by dates between Oct. 17 and Nov. 9.

The company recalled the following types of salad dressing:

Creamy Poblano Avocado Ranch Dressing and Dip
Ventura Caesar Dressing
Pepper Mill Regal Caesar Dressing
Pepper Mill Creamy Caesar Dressing
Caesar Dressing served at Costco Service Deli
Caesar Dressing served at Costco Food Court
Hidden Valley, Buttermilk Ranch

Business

They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

Published

1 day ago

December 19, 2025

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They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

A Stanford software engineering degree used to be a golden ticket. Artificial intelligence has devalued it to bronze, recent graduates say.

The elite students are shocked by the lack of job offers as they finish studies at what is often ranked as the top university in America.

When they were freshmen, ChatGPT hadn’t yet been released upon the world. Today, AI can code better than most humans.

Top tech companies just don’t need as many fresh graduates.

“Stanford computer science graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs” with the most prominent tech brands, said Jan Liphardt, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. “I think that’s crazy.”

While the rapidly advancing coding capabilities of generative AI have made experienced engineers more productive, they have also hobbled the job prospects of early-career software engineers.

Stanford students describe a suddenly skewed job market, where just a small slice of graduates — those considered “cracked engineers” who already have thick resumes building products and doing research — are getting the few good jobs, leaving everyone else to fight for scraps.

“There’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus,” said a recent computer science graduate who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. “People [who are] job hunting are very stressed out, and it’s very hard for them to actually secure jobs.”

The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.

Eylul Akgul graduated last year with a degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount University. She wasn’t getting offers, so she went home to Turkey and got some experience at a startup. In May, she returned to the U.S., and still, she was “ghosted” by hundreds of employers.

“The industry for programmers is getting very oversaturated,” Akgul said.

The engineers’ most significant competitor is getting stronger by the day. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it could only code for 30 seconds at a time. Today’s AI agents can code for hours, and do basic programming faster with fewer mistakes.

Data suggests that even though AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring many people, it is not offsetting the decline in hiring elsewhere. Employment for specific groups, such as early-career software developers between the ages of 22 and 25 has declined by nearly 20% from its peak in late 2022, according to a Stanford study.

It wasn’t just software engineers, but also customer service and accounting jobs that were highly exposed to competition from AI. The Stanford study estimated that entry-level hiring for AI-exposed jobs declined 13% relative to less-exposed jobs such as nursing.

In the Los Angeles region, another study estimated that close to 200,000 jobs are exposed. Around 40% of tasks done by call center workers, editors and personal finance experts could be automated and done by AI, according to an AI Exposure Index curated by resume builder MyPerfectResume.

Many tech startups and titans have not been shy about broadcasting that they are cutting back on hiring plans as AI allows them to do more programming with fewer people.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said that 70% to 90% of the code for some products at his company is written by his company’s AI, called Claude. In May, he predicted that AI’s capabilities will increase until close to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs might be wiped out in five years.

A common sentiment from hiring managers is that where they previously needed ten engineers, they now only need “two skilled engineers and one of these LLM-based agents,” which can be just as productive, said Nenad Medvidović, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California.

“We don’t need the junior developers anymore,” said Amr Awadallah, CEO of Vectara, a Palo Alto-based AI startup. “The AI now can code better than the average junior developer that comes out of the best schools out there.”

To be sure, AI is still a long way from causing the extinction of software engineers. As AI handles structured, repetitive tasks, human engineers’ jobs are shifting toward oversight.

Today’s AIs are powerful but “jagged,” meaning they can excel at certain math problems yet still fail basic logic tests and aren’t consistent. One study found that AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower at work, as they spent more time reviewing code and fixing errors.

Students should focus on learning how to manage and check the work of AI as well as getting experience working with it, said John David N. Dionisio, a computer science professor at LMU.

Stanford students say they are arriving at the job market and finding a split in the road; capable AI engineers can find jobs, but basic, old-school computer science jobs are disappearing.

As they hit this surprise speed bump, some students are lowering their standards and joining companies they wouldn’t have considered before. Some are creating their own startups. A large group of frustrated grads are deciding to continue their studies to beef up their resumes and add more skills needed to compete with AI.

“If you look at the enrollment numbers in the past two years, they’ve skyrocketed for people wanting to do a fifth-year master’s,” the Stanford graduate said. “It’s a whole other year, a whole other cycle to do recruiting. I would say, half of my friends are still on campus doing their fifth-year master’s.”

After four months of searching, LMU graduate Akgul finally landed a technical lead job at a software consultancy in Los Angeles. At her new job, she uses AI coding tools, but she feels like she has to do the work of three developers.

Universities and students will have to rethink their curricula and majors to ensure that their four years of study prepare them for a world with AI.

“That’s been a dramatic reversal from three years ago, when all of my undergraduate mentees found great jobs at the companies around us,” Stanford’s Liphardt said. “That has changed.”