The great long-run economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may be the permanent rise in working from home (Rauh et al. 2020, Shah et al. 2024). In North America and Europe working from home (WFH) is now four times higher than it was in 2019 (Buckman et al. 2025, Aksoy et al. 2025). This change has had a dramatic impact on many parts of the economy, from real-estate, to commuting, to leisure and retail spending (Barrero et al. 2023). One of the most notable effects could be a boost to disability employment (Ne’eman and Maestas, 2023). Working from home allows employees to avoid commuting and to control their working conditions, making work possible for millions of individuals with disabilities.
To illustrate this, consider a senior marketing executive we interviewed who was paralysed from the neck downwards after an accident. He mentioned that commuting to work took him three hours. His caregiver would come to the house, get him up and wash him, dress him and then take him to his car where his father would then drive him to work. In contrast he reported that at home he can be working within 20 minutes of waking up. Working from home also allowed him to efficiently Zoom from his bed, rather than wasting time navigating between locations and meetings in the office. He viewed his current schedule of three days a week at home and two days a week in the office as sustainable, but being in the office five days a week as unworkable.
The post-pandemic growth in disability employment
As background, before the pandemic the employment of people with a disability was remarkably low. While individuals without a disability had employment rates of 77% in the US in 2019, only 32% of those with a disability were employed. This disability employment gap has existed for decades, and represents both a major social issue and fiscal drain given government disability payments (Deshpande et al. 2021).
One reason for low disability employment is that firms did not offer accommodations that facilitated work. The pandemic, however, forced firms to restructure and increase remote work options for all workers. This work from home shock created new employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
As a result, the growth of disability employment in the US has been far faster than that of any other demographic group, as Figure 1 shows. While there have been rises in the employment of females, non-white Americans and non-native born, by far the largest growth rates are in disability employment.
Figure 1 Disability employment grew the fastest across any US demographic group post-pandemic
Notes: Percent change in the employment rate relative to January 2019 for those six major labor market splits using CPS data.
Figure 2 shows this increase in disability employment is also present in other countries we examined. The one exception was the UK, which due to its generous furlough scheme had distinct pandemic employment patterns. Otherwise, we see far greater growth in disability employment than non-disability employment.
Figure 2 Changes in disability employment across countries
Notes: Percent changes in the employment rate between 2019 and 2022 for those with and without a disability. Calculations using data from the US CPS, the UK Labor Force Survey and the Australian HILDA Survey. The numbers for Canada, France and Spain are from publicly available statistics from national labor force surveys.
Challenges in estimating a causal link
In our research (Bloom et al. 2024, 2025) we ask whether this sharp increase in disability employment is caused by the surge in working from home. Estimating a causal link is difficult for several reasons. First, during the pandemic there was a large inflow of individuals categorised as having a cognitive disability. If these newly disabled people have higher employability because they have less severe disabilities, this compositional change could explain the rise in disability employment. To address this issue, we examine the set of physical (i.e. non-cognitive) disabilities whose population size remains similar pre-post COVID.
Second, reverse causality could be present if workers with a disability have a high demand for WFH. To deal with this, we use the WFH rates of non-disabled workers to characterize how WFH opportunities have changed.
Third, omitted variable bias could be a problem – labour market tightness rose post-COVID, potentially making firms more willing to hire workers with a disability. To deal with this we control for labor market tightness and exploit variation based on the probability that occupations could be done from home from Dingel and Nieman (2020). For example, WFH rose by 36 percentage points for computer occupations (e.g. software developers and database administrators) but by only 4 percentage points for teachers (e.g. secondary school teachers). If WFH enables disability employment, we would expect to find larger increases in disability employment for computer scientists than for teachers.
Remote work explains the surge in disability employment
Using the Current Population Survey, we estimate that about 75% of the increase in full-time employment among people with physical disabilities post-Covid can be explained by the increase in WFH. This is a rise in employment of approximately a quarter of million people across the US by 2024 alone. If a similar effect applies to cognitive disabilities, this number rises to roughly 400,000. A natural question is whether labour supply or demand forces are behind this large increase in employment for individuals with a disability? On the supply side, WFH lowers the burden of commuting and also allows better control of the working environment. This should increase the supply of individuals with a disability wanting to work. On the demand side, WFH may reduce accommodation costs for firms, increase productivity for workers with a disability, and perhaps make it harder for employers to discriminate if interviews are on Zoom. This should increase the demand of firms to hire workers with a disability.
To investigate which of these forces dominate, we examined the change in wages for employees with a disability. Rising labour supply should push down wages while rising labor demand should push up wages. We found that wages fell, suggesting that labour supply is the dominant driving force. So, the surge in individuals with a disability wanting to work has increased their employment and mildly reduced their wages.
Since working from home is likely to reduce the flow out of employment – by letting older folks who gain disabilities with age work a few years longer – the impact of WFH is likely to grow over time. So, within ten years we could potentially see working from home increasing disability employment in the US by perhaps a million or more.
Silver lining from the pandemic
In summary, one silver lining from the COVID-19 pandemic has been the massive and permanent increase in working from home (Barrero et al. 2021). This change has made it easier for millions of people to work, particularly for those with disabilities, for whom commuting and office conditions are especially challenging. This provides a significant benefit for them by creating greater opportunities for work. This shift also benefits society overall by driving economic growth, improving public finances, and providing more goods and services for everyone.
References
Aksoy, C G, J M Barrero, N Bloom, S J Davis, M Dolls, and P Zarate (2025), “Working from home in 2025: Five Key Facts”, SIEPR Brief.
Barrero, J M, N Bloom, and S J Davis (2021), “Why working from home will stick”, NBER Working Paper No. 28731.
Barrero, J M, N Bloom, and S J Davis (2023), “The evolution of work from home”, Journal of Economic Perspectives 37(4): 23–49.
Bloom, N, Dahl, G B and D Rooth (2025), “Work from home and disability employment”, American Economic Review: Insights, forthcoming.
Bloom, N, Dahl, G B and D Rooth (2024), “Work from home and disability employment”, NBER Working Paper No. 32943.
Buckman, S, J M Barrero, N Bloom, and S J Davis (2025), “Measuring work from home”, NBER Working Paper No. 33508.
Deshpande, M, T Gross, and Y Su (2021). “Disability and distress: The effect of disability programs on financial outcomes”, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 13(2): 151–178.
Dingel, J I and B Neiman (2020), “How many jobs can be done at home?”, Journal of Public Economics 189: 104235.
Ne’eman, A and N Maestas (2023) “How has COVID-19 impacted disability employment?”, Disability and Health Journal 16(2): 101429.
Rauh, C, T Boneva, G Marta, and A Adams (2020) “Working from home: The polarising workplace”, VoxEU.org, 2 September.
Shah, K, N Bloom, P Bunn, P Mizen, G Thwaites, and I Yotzov (2024), “Managers say working from home is here to stay”, VoxEU.org, 18 February.
