Telecommuting tends to be a luxury for higher earners. The nature of service jobs, in particular, can make it impossible.
More than 60% of workers in management, business and finance had the ability to work from home at least some of the time in 2017 and 2018. About one-quarter of office and administrative employees were able to do the same. But among leisure and hospitality workers the share was less than 9%. Fewer than 1 in 30 workers in transportation could telework.
A lot of the industries with low rates of telework are the same industries with less paid leave. Of those workers in management, business and finance,if they happen to be quarantined or need to care for a child whose school closed. In the service sector, only 58% had paid sick days. Not surprisingly, there is a significant racial disparity in telework arrangements. Nearly 30% of white workers and 37% of Asian workers are able to work remotely, according to BLS. For Black workers, that share is less than 20%. For Latino workers, it is a mere 16%.
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department, said the telework data shows how many occupations still haven’t been integrated. “There remains an enormous amount of occupational segregation by race and ethnicity in the U.S. labor market, and given that people of color are much more likely to be in occupations where telework isn’t possible, people of color are going to be much harder hit by this crisis,” she said.
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