Discussion Papers no. 935

Evidence from task descriptions

Who and how many can work from home in Norway?

The COVID-19 crisis has forced great societal changes, including forcing many to work remotely (work from home) in an effort to increase social distancing.

The ability to work fromhome has long been considered a perk, but we have few estimates of how many are actually able to work from home. This paper attempts to estimate the share of the Norwegian jobs that can be performed remotely by combining register-based labor statistics and the official documentationof the ISCO-08 standard. We find that approximately 39% of Norwegian jobs can be performedat home.  The results suggest that the pandemic and the government’s attempts to mitigate thiscrisis may have a quite uneven impact on the population. Those who are already disadvantagedare often less likely to have remote-friendly jobs and thus are hit more severely.

 

About the publication

Title

Who and how many can work from home in Norway?. Evidence from task descriptions

Author

Henning Holgersen, Zhiyang Jia, Simen Svenkerud

Series and number

Discussion Papers no. 935

Publisher

Statistisk sentralbyrå

Topic

Discussion Papers

ISSN

1892-753X

Number of pages

18

About Discussion Papers

Discussion papers comprise research papers intended for international journals and books. A preprint of a Discussion Paper may be longer and more elaborate than a standard journal article as it may include intermediate calculations, background material etc.

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