The Other Work Remote Workers Get Done

The appeal of remote work is all too often glossed over as a matter of “quality of life” or “work-life balance” But that framing also ignores the uncompensated caregiving that many provide for America ’s young, sick, elderly, and disabled.

For a lot of caregivers, telecommuting allows them to manage a workload that is, if anything, way too big.

One recent report found that when you account for unpaid household production, the drop in economic activity that occurred during the pandemic was much less severe.

This makes sense; a lot of the work previously done by paid laborers didn’t go away, it just shifted into the home.

The omission of so much domestic work from economic indicators makes policies that support caregiving look like bad investments.

Evidence suggests that remote work is allowing caregivers to remain employed; it may be why labor-force participation for women with kids under 5 has leapfrogged its pre-pandemic rate.

Lynn Abaté-Johnson , who wrote a book about the six years she spent caring for her mother who had cancer, told me she could not have taken on such a large role in her mother’s care if she hadn’t been able to work remotely.