Exploring Research on the Evolution of Remote Work

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025. 

Go back six or seven years and working from home was an exception. Bosses discouraged it, contracts didn’t mention it, and we didn’t have the technology to do it. 

Covid changed all that. But since then, how have work patterns changed? Should we believe the press reports that we’re all being summoned back to the office, or is remote work now part of our lives – and what does that mean for employers and employees?

Steve Davis of the Hoover Institution and SIEPR has been measuring the evolution of flexible working since the pandemic. He spoke to Tim Phillips about the far-off times when little work was done at home, who is taking advantage of the change in the way we work, and who benefited most from the Great Resignation and the changes in hiring and outsourcing that followed it.