Quick answer
- In October 2026, 22.1% of people at work teleworked or worked at home for pay, about 35.2 million people (BLS Current Population Survey).
- The rate has been flat for two years: 23.8% in October 2024, 22.1% in October 2026.
- Remote work is concentrated in office jobs. Computer and mathematical occupations reached 63.1%; food preparation and serving reached 1.2%.
These remote work statistics answer one question first: how many Americans work from home? In October 2026, 22.1% of people at work teleworked or worked at home for pay, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Current Population Survey, Table A-41. About 11.5% did it for some of their hours and 10.6% for all of them. The sections below break the figure down by job, industry, age, education and hours, then add what Gallup, Pew and one peer-reviewed trial say about hybrid work, preferences and productivity.
How many Americans work remotely
BLS added telework questions to the Current Population Survey in October 2022, and it publishes monthly tables that are national only and not seasonally adjusted (BLS telework page). The latest tables, for October 2026, were updated on November 6, 2026.
- 159.3 million people were at work in the October 2026 reference week, and 35.2 million of them (22.1%) teleworked or worked at home for pay.
- 18.3 million (11.5%) teleworked some hours and 16.9 million (10.6%) teleworked all hours.
- Among full-time workers, 23.5% teleworked, against 15.3% of part-time workers.
- Among wage and salary workers, 20.5% teleworked. Among the self-employed it was 36.9%, and 41.3% for incorporated self-employed workers (Table A-42).
- In the public sector, 17.6% of federal, 25.1% of state and 9.4% of local government workers teleworked.
A different federal measure gives a larger number. The American Time Use Survey (release of June 25, 2026) found that 35% of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2025. Women were at 38% and men at 31%. The two surveys differ in method: the CPS asks about the reference week, while ATUS asks what people did on a diary day and counts any work at home. BLS also noted that ATUS operations were suspended from October 1 through November 12, 2025, during the federal shutdown, and that the effect on the 2025 estimates cannot be quantified.
What this means for employers: a headline "remote share" depends on the question. Before you benchmark your own team, decide whether you are comparing against people who work from home at all, or people who work from home every hour.
Remote work statistics: the trend since 2022
The CPS telework series begins in October 2022, so there is no BLS monthly baseline for 2019. The rate climbed through 2023 and 2024 and has been flat since. The highest value in the published monthly series is 23.8% in October 2024. BLS has no October 2025 value because of the lapse in appropriations (series LNU0201B46B).
- The rate was 17.9% in October 2022 and 22.1% in October 2026, an increase of 4.2 percentage points (Workzenly calculation from BLS data).
- Within 2026 the monthly rate ranged from 21.6% (August) to 23.0% (January).
- Gallup says the hybrid share of remote-capable employees "has held relatively steady since 2022."
- Pew's survey of working parents (March 2-15, 2026, 2,242 parents) found 35% say their job can be done from home. Pew says that is roughly unchanged from 2024 but down significantly from 2020 and 2022 (Pew, June 16, 2026).
What this means for employers: remote and hybrid work is now a stable part of the labor market, not a spike. Policies written as temporary exceptions are worth rewriting as standing rules.
Remote work by occupation and industry
Where people work matters more than anything else. In October 2026, 36.2% of management, professional and related workers teleworked, against 5.2% of service workers and 3.0% of production, transportation and material moving workers (BLS Table A-42).
- In financial activities, 54.0% teleworked, and in professional and business services 44.1%.
- In education and health services, 17.8% teleworked, and in leisure and hospitality 8.1%.
- 12.9% of education, training and library occupations teleworked, and 13.0% of healthcare practitioners.
- Only 1.2% of food preparation and serving workers teleworked, and just 0.2% did so for all their hours.
What this means for employers: if your team is hourly and on site, as in restaurants, retail, healthcare and construction, remote work is rare in your sector, and the live questions are scheduling and time tracking. Offices and professional firms face the opposite problem: most of the team may be out of the building some days. See our solution for offices.
Remote work by age, education and worker type
Education is the sharpest dividing line after occupation. In October 2026, workers age 25 and over with a bachelor's degree or higher teleworked at 38.2%, and those with an advanced degree at 41.0% (BLS Table A-41).
| Group | Teleworked | Teleworked some hours | Teleworked all hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| All people at work | 22.1% | 11.5% | 10.6% |
| Men | 20.0% | 11.3% | 8.8% |
| Women | 24.3% | 11.7% | 12.6% |
| Ages 16 to 24 | 5.9% | 3.5% | 2.4% |
| Ages 35 to 44 | 27.4% | 14.0% | 13.4% |
| Ages 65 and over | 23.9% | 10.1% | 13.8% |
| With own children under 18 | 27.0% | 14.1% | 13.0% |
| Native born | 23.1% | 12.0% | 11.1% |
| Foreign born | 17.8% | 9.5% | 8.4% |
| With a disability | 23.0% | 9.3% | 13.7% |
Source: BLS, Current Population Survey Table A-41, October 2026, not seasonally adjusted.
- Telework peaks at ages 35 to 44 (27.4%) and is lowest among 16 to 24 year olds (5.9%).
- By race and ethnicity, 30.3% of Asian workers teleworked, 22.7% of White workers, 15.0% of Black or African American workers and 12.4% of Hispanic or Latino workers. These gaps largely track occupation mix, which the table does not control for.
- In the ATUS release for 2025, 51% of employed people age 25 and over with a bachelor's degree or higher did some work at home on days worked, against 19% of those with a high school diploma and no college.
- Workers with a disability teleworked at 23.0% and workers with no disability at 22.0%. For all hours, the shares were 13.7% and 10.4%.
What this means for employers: remote work is a hiring lever mostly for roles that can be done on a laptop. Where it is offered, it widens the pool of candidates who are caregivers or who have a disability. Check your own roles before assuming it fits.
Remote work statistics on hours worked from home
Most people who telework do a lot of it. Those who teleworked in October 2026 averaged 26.3 hours a week at home, out of an average of 39.6 hours worked, so about 66.6% of their hours (BLS Table A-43). Across all people at work, telework averaged 5.8 hours of 38.0 hours, or 15.3% of all hours worked.
| Weekly hours teleworked | People (thousands) | Share of teleworkers |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 8 hours | 6,295 | 17.9% |
| 9 to 16 hours | 6,557 | 18.6% |
| 17 to 24 hours | 4,807 | 13.7% |
| 25 to 32 hours | 4,083 | 11.6% |
| 33 to 39 hours | 1,189 | 3.4% |
| 40 hours or more | 12,234 | 34.8% |
Source: BLS, Current Population Survey Table A-47, October 2026, not seasonally adjusted.
- Full-time teleworkers averaged 27.8 hours a week at home and part-time teleworkers 15.5 (Table A-46).
- Computer and mathematical workers who teleworked averaged 30.1 hours at home. Only healthcare support workers who teleworked averaged more, at 32.3 hours, while food preparation and serving workers averaged 13.8.
- Of the 35.2 million teleworkers, 16.9 million did all of their hours at home. That is 48.0% (Workzenly calculation from BLS data).
- On days they worked, full-time employed people worked an average of 8.1 hours in 2025 (ATUS).
What this means for employers: time worked at home still has to be recorded. For non-exempt staff, the clock does not stop being a legal record because the desk is a kitchen table. Our guide to time and attendance tracking covers the basics, and how many hours is full time covers the 35-hour split BLS uses.
Hybrid vs fully remote
BLS tables split telework into some hours and all hours. Gallup measures a narrower group, US employees with remote-capable jobs, and asks where they work. Gallup's data for August 2026 show 54% hybrid, 25% exclusively remote and 21% on-site (Gallup hybrid work indicator).
The two sources look different because they count different people: BLS counts every worker, most of whom cannot telework, while Gallup counts only those who could.
- Gallup's expected long-term split (May 2026) was 52% hybrid, 25% exclusively remote and 23% on-site.
- Pew (survey fielded October 7-13, 2024, 2,315 workers with jobs that can be done from home) found that among those not fully remote, 75% said their employer requires in-person days, up from 63% in early 2023 (Pew, January 13, 2025).
- Gallup found that only 11% of employees work on teams that set their hybrid policy together (May 2025).
- Pew's March 2026 survey split the 35% of working parents whose jobs can be done from home into 17% who work from home all or most of the time, 10% some of the time and 9% rarely or never.
What this means for employers: hybrid is the default for remote-capable jobs, and in-office days are now widely required. The hard part is running a schedule fairly. Our hybrid work schedule guide covers common patterns. For field and mobile staff, GPS time tracking records where the clock-in happened.
What workers want
- Gallup's November 2025 figures for remote-capable employees: 61% prefer hybrid, 33% exclusively remote and 6% on-site.
- In Pew's October 2024 survey, 72% of hybrid workers would choose a hybrid arrangement and 24% would choose to work from home all the time.
- Among teleworkable workers who rarely or never work from home, 63% would choose to work from home most or some of the time.
- Among non-self-employed workers who work from home at least some of the time, 46% said they would be unlikely to stay in their job if remote work were no longer allowed, and 26% said very unlikely. 36% said likely to stay.
- The "unlikely to stay" share was 61% among those who work from home all the time, 47% most of the time and 28% some of the time. It was 50% for workers under 50 and 35% for workers 50 and over.
Gallup's August 2026 engagement figures show little spread by location: 32% of exclusively remote, 31% of hybrid and 28% of on-site employees in remote-capable jobs were engaged. 53%, 55% and 54% of those groups were thriving. For all US employees it was 29% engaged and 49% thriving. Our employee engagement statistics cover the wider trend.
What this means for employers: the stated preference is for a mix, not for a full return to the office. The retention risk is concentrated among workers who are already fully remote and workers under 50.
Productivity and retention evidence
Remote work statistics on preference are not evidence of performance. The most rigorous result we found is a randomized controlled trial by Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han and James Liang, published in Nature on June 12, 2024. It ran from August 2021 to January 2022 at Trip.com, a Chinese travel technology company, and involved 1,612 employees. Employees with odd-numbered birthdays were offered two work-from-home days a week, on Wednesday and Friday.
- The authors report that hybrid work "improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third."
- Quit rates were 7.20% in the control group and 4.80% in the hybrid group.
- "Null equivalence tests showed that hybrid working did not affect performance grades over the next two years of reviews."
- The authors "found no evidence for a difference in promotions over the next two years overall, or for any major employee subgroup."
Treat the result with care: it covers hybrid work of two days a week, at one company, in one country, among workers in a single technology firm. It is not evidence about fully remote work or about hourly roles.
What this means for employers: if you worry about performance, the best-tested option is a structured hybrid schedule with fixed days, plus clear reviews. Track hours and output the same way for everyone.
About this data
These remote work statistics use the sources below, and the page is reviewed when new releases come out. BLS publishes the CPS telework tables monthly with the Employment Situation. ATUS is annual (the 2025 results were released on June 25, 2026). Gallup updates its hybrid work indicator on a rolling basis, and Pew publishes by survey. All CPS figures here are not seasonally adjusted and use the October 2026 reference month. We have not used WFH Research's Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes numbers because its data are in downloadable files that we did not open. Its site says it surveys 2,500 to 10,000 US residents a month and lists the next update for December 5, 2026. Journalists and bloggers are welcome to cite this page with a link to workzenly.com/blog/remote-work-statistics/.
Two cautions. First, Gallup and Pew define "remote-capable" workers differently from the CPS, so shares cannot be compared across them. Second, "Workzenly calculation" marks the few figures we derived (the 4.2 point change and the 48.0% share), not published statistics.
More workforce statistics: Four-day work week statistics · Employee engagement statistics · Labor productivity statistics · Job satisfaction statistics.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Telework or work at home for pay in the Current Population Survey, methodology and table index.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-41, people at work by telework status and selected characteristics, October 2026 (modified November 6, 2026).
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-42, by full- or part-time status, occupation, industry and class of worker, October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-43, average weekly hours and percent of hours teleworked, October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-46, people who teleworked and average weekly hours teleworked, October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-47, people who teleworked by average weekly hours teleworked, October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Series LNU0201B46B, percent of employed persons at work who teleworked, October 2022 to October 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey Summary, 2025 results, released June 25, 2026.
- Gallup, Indicator: Hybrid Work, data through August 2026.
- Pew Research Center, Many remote workers say they'd be likely to leave their job if they could no longer work from home, January 13, 2025 (survey fielded October 7-13, 2024).
- Pew Research Center, Does working from home make work-family balance easier?, June 16, 2026 (survey fielded March 2-15, 2026).
- Bloom, N., Han, R. and Liang, J., Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance, Nature 630, 920-925, June 12, 2024.
- WFH Research, Data page, Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (method description only).
Frequently asked questions
What percent of US workers work from home in 2026?
In October 2026, 22.1% of people at work teleworked or worked at home for pay, according to the BLS Current Population Survey. That is 35.2 million people. About 11.5% did so for some hours and 10.6% for all hours. The figure is not seasonally adjusted.
How many people work fully remote?
BLS reports that 10.6% of people at work teleworked all of their hours in October 2026, or 16.9 million people. Gallup, which surveys only employees whose jobs can be done remotely, found 25% exclusively remote in August 2026. The two figures differ because they cover different groups.
Which jobs have the highest remote work rates?
In October 2026, BLS found computer and mathematical occupations at 63.1%, business and financial operations at 55.1% and legal occupations at 54.7%. By industry, finance and insurance led at 59.5% and professional and technical services followed at 58.1%.
Is remote work going up or down?
It has been roughly flat since late 2024. BLS put the telework rate at 23.8% in October 2024 and 22.1% in October 2026. Gallup says the hybrid share of remote-capable employees has held relatively steady since 2022, at 54% in August 2026.
Do remote workers get less done?
A randomized trial of 1,612 employees at Trip.com, published in Nature in June 2024, found that two days a week at home did not affect performance grades or promotions over the next two years. Quit rates fell from 7.20% to 4.80%. It tested hybrid work only, at one company.
What do workers prefer: remote, hybrid or office?
Gallup's November 2025 data for remote-capable employees show 61% preferring hybrid, 33% exclusively remote and 6% on-site. Pew found in October 2024 that 72% of hybrid workers would choose a hybrid arrangement if they could pick.