Episode 73: Trending — Work from Home and Disability Employment

About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of remote work on disability employment, highlighting a significant increase in employment for individuals with physical disabilities post-pandemic.

**Top Trending Friday** — our weekly pick of the top-trending paper on r/science this week. **Paper:** [Work from Home and Disability Employment](https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20240538) **Authors:** Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl, Dan-Olof Rooth **Journal:** American Economic Review: Insights, 2025 **Why it matters:** The post-pandemic rise in remote work appears to have accomplished more for disability employment than three decades of targeted legal mandates ever did. **Summary** Between 2019 and 2024, full-time employment for working-age adults with physical disabilities surged roughly 14% — an unprecedented divergence from employment trends for non-disabled workers, which remained essentially flat over the same period. Bloom, Dahl, and Rooth ask whether the concurrent fourfold increase in work-from-home (WFH) rates caused this surge, or whether a tight post-pandemic labor market and shifting demographics are responsible. To isolate the causal effect of WFH, the authors clear three methodological hurdles. First, they restrict their sample to the five physical disability categories in the Current Population Survey (hearing, vision, ambulatory, self-care, and independent living)…

People in this episode

Host: Raymond Ruff

Topics covered

• remote work
• disability employment
• post-pandemic labor market
• employment trends
• work-from-home

Keywords

• work from home
• disability employment
• remote work
• labor market
• employment trends

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: American Economic Review: Insights

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