Occupational Segregation and Remote Work Inequality by Race and Gender, 2017–2026

• In Event: Gender and Race at Work

Abstract

This paper argues that the racial and gender gap in working from home is primarily a product of pre-existing occupational segregation that the pandemic made visible. Using the Current Population Survey with
1.4 million workers (2022–2026) and the American Community Survey with
8.4 million workers (2017–2024), I show that the racial and gender gap in WFH is predominantly a between-occupation phenomenon, with detailed occupation explaining the majority of the gap beyond education. The variation is distinctly intersectional. The WFH gender gap is large and female-favoring among Black workers, modest among White and Hispanic workers, and reversed among Asian workers. This pattern reflects how men of different races concentrate in occupations with sharply different remote work feasibility, while women’s occupations overlap more across race. A detailed decomposition confirms that pre-existing occupational positions, interacting with uneven post-pandemic WFH growth across occupations, account for roughly nine-tenths of the cross-racial variation in how the gender gap changed after the pandemic, while pandemic-era worker redistribution was negligible. More broadly, these findings suggest that when shocks activate new dimensions of the occupational structure, the resulting inequality tracks pre-existing racial and gender segregation.

Author

• Minjin Chae, Harvard University