70 percent of white-collar workers in US still working remotely: Gallup

Just over 70 percent of American white-collar workers are still working from home, according to a new poll released by Gallup on Monday.

According to Gallup’s COVID-19 tracking poll, 72 percent of white-collar workers are still working from home. Gallup categorizes white-collar work as a job that is traditionally performed in an office or at a computer. However, in some fields the percentage of workers who are staying at home exceeds 80 percent.

In computer-oriented or mathematical fields and the life, physical or social sciences, 86 percent of employees are still working remotely. In arts, design, entertainment and media fields 81 percent are still working from home.

These numbers come out just as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new mask guidance that said fully vaccinated individuals could go maskless in most indoor and outdoor settings, essentially allowing them to return to pre-pandemic life.

Gallup noted that 35 percent of full-time employees said they would like to continue working from home once pandemic restrictions are lifted. This 35 percent includes 9 percent who said they wished to continue working remotely due to lingering concerns about the coronavirus. The remaining 26 percent said they preferred working from home.

“Occupations consisting mainly of people who perform their jobs behind desks have experienced the remote-work revolution most intensely in the past year. More than seven in 10 workers in such ‘white collar’ jobs have been working from home all or part of the time, in contrast with fewer than two in 10 blue-collar workers,” Gallup said. “Reflecting this, a much higher percentage of white-collar than blue-collar workers want to continue working remotely.”

The results were found from a monthly, self-administered web survey conducted from October 2020 to April 2021. In the analysis used to find the results, 7,274 employed U.S. adults over the age of 18 took part. The data had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.