Internet diffusion, remote work opportunities, and the careers of men and women
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: Economics
Abstract
"Atypical" work arrangements have become widespread in most countries, including - among other categories - flexible work schedules, compressed workweeks, job sharing and working from home. The number of people working from home in the UK has risen from 2.9 million in 1998 to 4.2 million in 2014, corresponding to 14% of those in employment, and an additional 1.8 million people report they would prefer to work for home if they were given the chance. In 2018 the UK Government launched the Flexible Working Task Force with the aim to encourage the availability and uptake of flexible working, while improving the quality of working lives.
Internet technology has been one key enabler of remote working, allowing employees to perform several tasks remotely from their workplaces, while remaining connected to their coworkers and managers. While atypical work arrangements are often chosen by individuals who especially value their inherent flexibility, and most notably women with family constraints, one likely downside is their associated earnings instability and reduced prospects of promotion.
In this research we propose to investigate how the availability of broadband internet has shaped remote working in Britain, with consequences on working arrangements, career progression, the range of jobs considered and ultimately the geography of job-worker matches. We will document the anatomy of working from home and study its role in shaping the careers of affected workers, with an emphasis on its consequences for the gender gaps in pay and labour market trajectories. To this purpose we will combine secondary data from several administrative and survey sources to uncover patterns of internet penetration and labour market outcomes across the universe of British postcodes (around 1.5 million).
Our first objective will be to the growth in remote work to the rollout of broadband internet since the late 1990s. In doing this, we will combine very localized variation in broadband signal quality with information on the telephone network technological upgrades in order to predict opportunities of working remotely at the very local level. Alongside, we propose to investigate distributional consequences of this technological change across individuals with different characteristics (gender, age, skills, experience, family composition, etc.) and across tasks that are differentially permeable to remote work.
Our second objective consists in exploring the consequences of remote work on the careers of affected workers. One key channel of impact relates to the role of remote work and the associated work flexibility in work-life balance considerations. As women remain to date the main providers of childcare and domestic work in general, they tend to value flexible work schedules and shorter commutes more than men, and professions that introduced greater flexibility in their organization have achieved greater reductions in their earnings gap than professions that disproportionately reward long and inflexible hours. However, recent work has shown evidence of persistent earnings gaps even in areas of the `gig' economy characterized by completely flexible work schedules. Evidence also shows that men typically have longer work commutes than women, and that the 'gender commuting gap' widens markedly around the birth of the first child. The gender commuting gap is potentially linked to the gender gap in earnings (which also widens upon child birth), as women are induced by family responsibilities to search for jobs closer to home may be willing to trade off higher wages for the possibility of a shorter commute and forgo opportunities of career development further afield. Against this backdrop, we explore the importance of working from home for women's careers, and in particular their labour market attachment, occupational choices and career progression.
Internet technology has been one key enabler of remote working, allowing employees to perform several tasks remotely from their workplaces, while remaining connected to their coworkers and managers. While atypical work arrangements are often chosen by individuals who especially value their inherent flexibility, and most notably women with family constraints, one likely downside is their associated earnings instability and reduced prospects of promotion.
In this research we propose to investigate how the availability of broadband internet has shaped remote working in Britain, with consequences on working arrangements, career progression, the range of jobs considered and ultimately the geography of job-worker matches. We will document the anatomy of working from home and study its role in shaping the careers of affected workers, with an emphasis on its consequences for the gender gaps in pay and labour market trajectories. To this purpose we will combine secondary data from several administrative and survey sources to uncover patterns of internet penetration and labour market outcomes across the universe of British postcodes (around 1.5 million).
Our first objective will be to the growth in remote work to the rollout of broadband internet since the late 1990s. In doing this, we will combine very localized variation in broadband signal quality with information on the telephone network technological upgrades in order to predict opportunities of working remotely at the very local level. Alongside, we propose to investigate distributional consequences of this technological change across individuals with different characteristics (gender, age, skills, experience, family composition, etc.) and across tasks that are differentially permeable to remote work.
Our second objective consists in exploring the consequences of remote work on the careers of affected workers. One key channel of impact relates to the role of remote work and the associated work flexibility in work-life balance considerations. As women remain to date the main providers of childcare and domestic work in general, they tend to value flexible work schedules and shorter commutes more than men, and professions that introduced greater flexibility in their organization have achieved greater reductions in their earnings gap than professions that disproportionately reward long and inflexible hours. However, recent work has shown evidence of persistent earnings gaps even in areas of the `gig' economy characterized by completely flexible work schedules. Evidence also shows that men typically have longer work commutes than women, and that the 'gender commuting gap' widens markedly around the birth of the first child. The gender commuting gap is potentially linked to the gender gap in earnings (which also widens upon child birth), as women are induced by family responsibilities to search for jobs closer to home may be willing to trade off higher wages for the possibility of a shorter commute and forgo opportunities of career development further afield. Against this backdrop, we explore the importance of working from home for women's careers, and in particular their labour market attachment, occupational choices and career progression.
Planned Impact
Our research aims at providing a deeper understanding of the consequences of major transformations in the labour market induced by technological advancements on careers, work life balance considerations and female labour supply in particular.
We plan to achieve impact by focusing on some of the benefits to workers of such transformations, while also highlighting potential costs to individuals and society. These include increased job insecurity, lack of representation and formidable challenges to social protection and social security. The public and policy debates in the areas of future of work, innovation and the consequences for workers often travel on parallel paths and there is still a limited understanding of the design appropriate policies in the face of such trade-offs. With this in mind we plan to maximize the societal and policy impact of our research by:
- Providing critical thinking and a more nuanced understanding to the general public and key stakeholders of such trade-offs
- Participating in the policy debate and influence policy making in the design of appropriate policies in these areas.
Key policy stakeholders that we plan to reach are:
- National governments and supra-national organizations working on the rapid labour market transformations induced by the spread of ICT. The recently launched Flexible Working Task Force at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has the explicit aim of encouraging firms' uptake of flexible working arrangements. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have all started a new research and policy agenda on the Future of Work.
- National governments and supra-national organizations working on gender gaps in labour market outcomes. For example, The OECD has been heavily engaged in gender equality campaigns through its Gender Initiative, monitoring progress made by both member and non-member countries in implementing family friendly policies and workplace practices, as well as promoting gender equality in education, employment and entrepreneurship.
- Public bodies that focus on the costs and benefits of the ICT. The UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) is involved in estimating the economic impacts of broadband Internet diffusion), while the European Commission DG CONNECT is actively engaged in understanding the impact of Internet on economic growth and job creation.
We have already discussed our research project and recorded an interest by the following individuals : Stefano Scarpetta (Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the OECD), Mariya Gabriel and Roberto Viola (Commissioner and Director General of DG CONNECT at the European Commission respectively), Luisa Affuso (Chief Economist, Ofcom), Carmen Pages (Chief, Labor Markets and Social Security Division at Inter-American Development Bank), Alex Chisholm (Permanent Secretary and Chair of the Executive Committee, BEIS).
We plan to achieve maximum impact by means of the following pathways, leveraging on our contacts and reputation in policy circles, a proven experience of achieving impact for our research, and institutional support (see Pathways to Impact attachment):
1. Engaging in dissemination and public outreach activities
2. Preparing a white paper
3. Organizing a conference to be held at QM at the closing the grant cycle (appropriately costed in the grant) that combines presentations by academic researchers and a policy panel
We plan to achieve impact by focusing on some of the benefits to workers of such transformations, while also highlighting potential costs to individuals and society. These include increased job insecurity, lack of representation and formidable challenges to social protection and social security. The public and policy debates in the areas of future of work, innovation and the consequences for workers often travel on parallel paths and there is still a limited understanding of the design appropriate policies in the face of such trade-offs. With this in mind we plan to maximize the societal and policy impact of our research by:
- Providing critical thinking and a more nuanced understanding to the general public and key stakeholders of such trade-offs
- Participating in the policy debate and influence policy making in the design of appropriate policies in these areas.
Key policy stakeholders that we plan to reach are:
- National governments and supra-national organizations working on the rapid labour market transformations induced by the spread of ICT. The recently launched Flexible Working Task Force at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has the explicit aim of encouraging firms' uptake of flexible working arrangements. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have all started a new research and policy agenda on the Future of Work.
- National governments and supra-national organizations working on gender gaps in labour market outcomes. For example, The OECD has been heavily engaged in gender equality campaigns through its Gender Initiative, monitoring progress made by both member and non-member countries in implementing family friendly policies and workplace practices, as well as promoting gender equality in education, employment and entrepreneurship.
- Public bodies that focus on the costs and benefits of the ICT. The UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) is involved in estimating the economic impacts of broadband Internet diffusion), while the European Commission DG CONNECT is actively engaged in understanding the impact of Internet on economic growth and job creation.
We have already discussed our research project and recorded an interest by the following individuals : Stefano Scarpetta (Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the OECD), Mariya Gabriel and Roberto Viola (Commissioner and Director General of DG CONNECT at the European Commission respectively), Luisa Affuso (Chief Economist, Ofcom), Carmen Pages (Chief, Labor Markets and Social Security Division at Inter-American Development Bank), Alex Chisholm (Permanent Secretary and Chair of the Executive Committee, BEIS).
We plan to achieve maximum impact by means of the following pathways, leveraging on our contacts and reputation in policy circles, a proven experience of achieving impact for our research, and institutional support (see Pathways to Impact attachment):
1. Engaging in dissemination and public outreach activities
2. Preparing a white paper
3. Organizing a conference to be held at QM at the closing the grant cycle (appropriately costed in the grant) that combines presentations by academic researchers and a policy panel
| Description | The spread of remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a profound and unprecedented transformation in global work arrangements. In this research project, we have studied how individual opportunities for remote work have shaped workers' take-up of remote work and, via this, their decision to participate to the labour market both pre- and post the COVID-19 pandemic period. There are three main findings from this research. 1. Connection to high quality broadband from one's home is a key enabling technology for workers' involvement in remote work. This became particularly important in the pandemic and post-pandemic period when remote work became the "new normal". 2. There are substantial inequalities in access to broadband connections across geographies, in turn affecting different individuals' remote work involvement. 3. There is no evidence of employment or earnings gains among individuals with greater opportunities for remote work. This is in contrast to the optimism that the spread of remote work arrangements would have drawn those with high cost of commuting and high constraints on their time - primarily women with childcare responsibilities - into work and boosted their career prospects. |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings have several policy implications: 1. Universal access to high-quality broadband eases the transition into remote work arrangements. As there is evidence from other research of gains to workers in terms of well-being and commuting time/costs, and no or small detrimental effects on productivity, this suggests a clear rationale for public policy to subsidise access to high quality broadband. 2. There are discrepancies across areas in access to broadband. Hence, there is also a rationale for policy to level up such differences. 3. There is no evidence that incentivizing remote work through public subsidies to high quality broadband would lead to employment gains among those with high costs of commuting or higher opportunity costs of time, in particular women with childcare responsibilities. The findings of this research and the data set that we have assembled have the potential to generate policy relevant research. In particular these data could be used to understand how access to remote study opportunities during the pandemic affected medium term educational and even labour market outcomes among those of school age. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Government Democracy and Justice |
| Description | Our research has contributed to shaping public understanding of the drivers and consequences of the rise in remote work during the pandemic. As documented above, we have proactively engaged in communicating our research to both academic and in particular non-academic audiences in an attempt to shape this understanding and influence policy. The latter has still to materialize but we are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future. One challenge that we have encountered in achieving further impact is the lack of QLFS data past the first half of 2023. The ONS has still to release such data with detailed geo-referenced indicators in the UKDS secure lab. This has hampered our ability to draw conclusions on the longer-term effects of the remote work revolution that followed the pandemic and provide timely evidence that would be relevant to current policy making. We remain hopeful that the ONS will promptly release these data . |
| First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
| Sector | Other |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Description | Advice provided to a team of policymakers/labour economists at the Interamerican Debelopment Bank (IDB) in Washigton DC, on themes of workplace inclusivity and gender inequality |
| Geographic Reach | South America |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | Results from the research funded by this grant were covered in the 2023 IDB publication. |
| URL | https://publications.iadb.org/en/expanding-opportunities-policies-gender-equality-and-inclusion |
| Title | The geography of broadband diffusion |
| Description | We have built a data set at the level of both postcodes and output areas for the whole of Great Britain that. for each geography records, location, distance to the respective Local Exchanges (LE), distance to LE catchment area borders and a large array of area characteristics, as well as broadband penetration for the years past 2013. The appendix of the attached working paper describes the procedure used and the resulting data sets, including providing basic descriptive statistics. Additional details are in the attached document below. We will be make this data set available to interested users when our research is published subject to data owners' approval. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | This unique data set has allowed to explore broadband penetration and patterns of work as a function of technological features (distance to the LE catchment area border) at a very fine level of geography. In particular, we exploit a feature of broadband technology that makes the signal decline with distance to the local exchange (LE), that transmits signal to end users via copper wires. One feature of this technology is that internet speed rapidly decays with distance from the LE and, hence, the quality of signals falls with distance. This is the basis of our identification strategy that focuses on postcodes in the neighborhood of contiguous LE catchment area borders. Under the assumption that unobserved determinants of such outcomes variables vary continuously at the border, one can compare broadband take up and labor market outcomes on the two sides of the threshold in order to identify the effect of signal quality on such outcomes. The strategy is akin to a geographical discontinuity design that instruments signal quality and hence take-up with distance to the respective local exchange. Although others before us have used the same strategy, all previous studies studies focus on a comparison between the "short" and long "side", in practice discretizing the treatment dummy. That approach of course comes at the cost of loss in precision (and indeed it appears not to hold on our data). Our result show that this was an important predictor of boradband take up and that it affected patterns of remote work precisely in the direction expected during the pandemic, with patterns that appear to survive to date. |
| URL | https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vind0f2mvv78smrr4t1nf/ReadMe.pdf?rlkey=mxb2x8xo2nses8trowopa4vty&dl=0 |
| Description | CEPR/INSEAD Workshop on Inequality and the Role of Firms |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | The event will brought together about 6 leading figures from the private sector and 10 academics to discuss topics of mutual interest in the broad area of personnel economics - covering productivity, re-skilling, family-friendly practices, WFH, Flexible working, etc. The idea was to start with a small gathering that would hopefully kickstart fruitful networks and collaborations in the longer-term. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Conference organised by grant holders Marco Manacorda and Barbara Petrongolo at the ESRC grant's host institution, QMUL |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Manacorda and Petrongolo organised and hosted an academic conference "Symposium in Labour Economics" at QMUL. The event was partly funded by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, the main network of economists in Europe. The event covered several contributions on themes related to this project, including gender inequalities and the future of work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://cepr.org/events/event-series/european-summer-symposium-labour-economics-essle/cepr-qmul-annu... |
| Description | FLEXIBLE WORK AND INFLEXIBLE CARE: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR AN INCLUSIVE WORKFORCE |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | An intensive one-day interactive workshop presented by the Oxford University Business Economics Programme. Description "Work is changing rapidly. To remain inclusive, businesses must further adapt to the changing realities of family life. Our Diversity Day workshop will examine the latest economic research and business practices on promoting inclusive work, managing a flexible workforce, creating gender-inclusive supply chains and encouraging supportive fatherhood. The world's finest labour economists, many of whom are at Oxford, will engage in conversations and debates with business and policy leaders from around the world in order to stimulate new ideas for building inclusive workplaces." Presentation by Barbara Petrongolo drew on results from the current project; available here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x1583b7gs97aayzg7e928/slides_esrc.pdf?rlkey=g2oge8nqdcs3r6605rgdp9764&dl=0 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://oubep.econ.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Flexible-Work-programme-with-schedule.pdf |
| Description | NHH Spring conference (Bergen Business School) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | This is an annual conference organised and hosted by the Bergen Business School for business leaders, practitioners, and the media. The theme of the 2024 Conference was: "The future of work: Control or Chaos?" The future of work demands something new from us. Artificial intelligence and technological innovations will affect the daily lives of employees, leaders, and companies. Reskilling and adjustments to new and old business models are necessary. Leaders must manage employees who expect flexibility and digital interaction. At the same time, the gap between winners and losers in the workplace and across various industries may widen. How can we prepare for the work life of tomorrow? Barbara Petrongolo gave a talk at the Conference on "Gender in Firms". Presentation available here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/socc6mt7jlmne936a9tyt/slides_esrc.pdf?rlkey=ws9gazuszsz5krqe13ml8s67w&dl=0 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.nhh.no/globalassets/konferanser/varkonferansen/varkonferansen-2024.pdf |