Will Teleworking Suppress or Transform In-Person Social Interactions?

• In Event: 20206 - Sociology of Time Use

Abstract

Teleworking has emerged as a practice with significant potential to transform workplace dynamics and relationships in the future of work. Drawing on the 2022–2023 American Time Use Study linked to the Current Population Survey, this paper uses sequence analysis (SA) to track daily interaction patterns and apply partitioning-around-medoids (PAM) clustering to identify three distinct social-interaction sequence patterns during a 24-hour diary day. Regression models show that teleworking is the strongest predictor of cluster membership—even more than demographic and household factors. Specifically, over 95% of teleworkers fall into the “predominantly alone” cluster, compared to about 60% of on-site workers. Post-estimation analysis confirms that this cluster has the lowest in-person workplace contact—about 380 minutes fewer minutes for men and 420 minutes fewer for women than other clusters. These findings highlight how remote work reconfigures daily social rhythms and access to workplace sociality. Methodologically, this paper demonstrates the analytical power of SA in time-use research. As flexible work arrangements become more common, sequence analysis offers a crucial toolkit for capturing the complexity of daily life beyond isolated activity counts or aggregate time-use summaries.

Author

• Qianyi Sinyee Lu, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign