Remote workers value access to good services and proximity to family in the communities they live in

Washington, DC, February 23, 2023 — New Ipsos polling provided exclusively to the Wall Street Journal finds that for employed Americans who’ve had experience with remote work during pandemic or who currently remote work, access to good services, like schools and hospitals, are among the most important qualities they look for in the neighborhood they live in. Three in five of these workers feel appreciated by their colleagues and believe they have work-life balance. For many, work-life balance means they can completely step away from their work after-hours or on vacation.

Detailed findings:
Access to good services, like schools and hospitals, and family are the most important qualities in a neighborhood for workers who’ve had some experience remote working since the pandemic.

• Supermajorities value access to quality hospitals/medical care (91%) and the ability to easily schedule medical appointments (85%).
• Decisive majorities (73%) see having family nearby as important. Having family nearby is particularly important for workers making under $50K (81%) compared to those making over $150K (67%).
  • People currently working outside of the home (75%) are slightly more likely than people working from home (70%) or doing a mix of both (70%) to value having family nearby. Parents with a kid under 18 (77%) are also more likely than people who don’t have a kid under 18 (71%) to want family nearby.
• Similarly, majorities value access to good quality schools or childcare services (62%).
  • That rises to 90% for parents who have kids under 18 compared to 49% of people who value access to good quality schools or childcare services and people between the ages of 35 and 54.

Overall, most people currently remote working or who’ve had some experience remote working during the pandemic feel appreciated by colleagues and have a healthy work-life balance.

• In the past three months, three in five remote workers always or often feel they are appreciated by coworkers (60%) and have a healthy work-life balance (57%).
  • People currently working from home (64%) are more likely to feel that they always or often have a healthy work-life balance compared to people working inside and outside of the home (59%) or people working entirely outside of the home (48%).
  • Interestingly, people who worked from home prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (63%) are far more likely to feel they have a healthy work-life balance than people who worked outside of the home (47%) or did a combination of the two (49%).
• About half have always or often felt intellectual fulfillment (51%) and like their company or employer’s leadership cared about their wellbeing (51%).
  • People working from home (55%) or doing a mix of working in and outside the home (58%) are more likely to feel intellectually fulfilled compared to people working just outside the home (45%).
• Just one in three (35%) of these workers feel they are making a difference in the world.

Remote pandemic workers or people who currently work from home are more likely to feel that a healthy work-life balance revolves around stepping away from their work and not having work bleed into their personal lives.

• A plurality of these workers (44%) feels that a healthy work-life balances means being able to completely step away from work after hour and/or on vacation.
  • People currently working from home (48%) are more likely than people working outside of the home (40%) or doing a mix of both (38%) to feel this is part of a healthy work-life balance. People making over $150K (47%) are more likely than people making under $50K (33%) to feel this way too.
• Following that, workers associate a healthy work-life balance with having time for activities you enjoy outside of work (40%), not feeling overly stressed about work (36%), or having time outside of work to take care of errands and personal tasks (31%).
  • People who worked from home during the pandemic (34%) or did hybrid work (37%) are more likely than those who worked outside of the home (23%) to feel that having time outside of work to take care of errands and personal tasks is part of a healthy work-life balance.
• Parents of kids under 18 (41%) are much more likely than people without kids under 18 (21%) to say that feeling present during family/personal time is part of a healthy work-life balance.
• Fewer feel that not being stretched too thin all the time (22%) or having a reasonable or appropriate amount of work (19%) is part of work-life balance.

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Mallory Newall
Vice President, US
Public Affairs
+1 202 374-2613

[email protected]

About the Study

This poll was conducted August 8 to August 18, 2022, by Ipsos using the probability-based KnowledgePanel®. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample of 1,050 employed adults age 18 or older who work or worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey was conducted using KnowledgePanel, the largest and most well-established online probability-based panel that is representative of the adult US population. Our recruitment process employs a scientifically developed addressed-based sampling methodology using the latest Delivery Sequence File of the USPS – a database with full coverage of all delivery points in the US. Households are randomly sampled from all available households in the U.S. All persons in selected households are invited to join and participate in KnowledgePanel. Ipsos provides selected households that do not already have internet access a tablet and internet connection at no cost to them. Those who join the panel and who are selected to participate in a survey are sent a unique password-protected log-in used to complete surveys online. As a result of our recruitment and sampling methods, samples from KnowledgePanel cover all households regardless of their phone or internet status and findings can be reported with a margin of sampling error and projected to the general population.

The study was conducted in English. All employed respondents were weighted to adjust for gender by age, race/ethnicity, education, Census region by metropolitan status, and household income. The demographic benchmarks for employed adults came from the 2021 March supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The weighting categories were as follows:

• Gender (Male, Female) by Age (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, 60+)
• Race-Ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic)
• Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) by Metropolitan Status (Metro, Non-Metro)
• Education (Less than High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor or higher)
• Household Income (under $25K, $25K-$49,999, $50K-$74,999, $75K-$99,999, $100K-$149,999, $150K and over)

The resulting weights for the subset of remote workers were scaled to add up to the 1,050 employed adults age 18 or older who work or worked remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic

The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.29 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of employed adults who work or work remotely. The margin of sampling error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.18. The margin of sampling error is higher and varies for results based on sub-samples. In our reporting of the findings, percentage points are rounded off to the nearest whole number. As a result, percentages in a given table column may total slightly higher or lower than 100%. In questions that permit multiple responses, columns may total substantially more than 100%, depending on the number of different responses offered by each respondent.

About Ipsos

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