The states with the most Americans working from home

Schmidt's tweak

In July, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a roomful of Stanford students that his former company “decided that work-life balance, going home early and working from home was more important than winning” the AI battle, even though major competitors like OpenAI implement very similar WFH policies.

However, after a since-deleted YouTube video of the speech was picked up by the media this week, Schmidt walked back his comments, telling the WSJ: “I misspoke about Google and their work hours, I regret my error”.

Whether you agree with his initial stance when it comes to logging in remotely, there’s no denying that the pandemic trend is still at work across the states… just not entirely evenly. 

The last time the US Census Bureau asked (in a survey earlier this summer), 27% of respondents said that there was someone in their household teleworking or working from home in the last 7 days. Although that’s down from the pandemic peak in 2021, when 37% of Americans said the same, there are still pockets around the country where figures have held up. 

In Washington DC (too small to map), a whopping 54% of respondents reported someone in the household logging in from home, while 40% of those in Vermont, and 37% of Marylanders and Coloradans said the same. Meanwhile, some states seem comparatively unswayed by the phenomenon, with just 14% and 12% of Louisiana and Mississippi respondents, respectively, reporting a homeworker in the household. 

Interestingly, Starbucks’ new CEO Brian Niccol will join California's remote-working legion in September, with the coffee giant establishing a “small remote office” for Niccol, agreeing to fly him out to the company’s Seattle HQ when needed. We don't know for sure who America's highest paid remote worker is, but Niccol's potential $100M+ pay packet and bespoke CA workspace surely put him up there.