Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health

Editor’s summaryRemote work skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research since has prioritized studying the impact of working remotely on productivity and job satisfaction but neglected other consequences such as loneliness and mental health. Emanuel et al. examined pre- and postpandemic population-level changes in well-being among workers in remote-capable jobs versus jobs necessitating on-site presence (see the Perspective by Zang and O’Brien). After the pandemic, workers in remote-capable jobs spent more time working alone and avoided social activities with their friends, remaining more isolated both during and after work. This pattern was most pronounced among remote workers living alone: They spent entire days without human contact and their mental distress, use of mental healthcare, and antidepressants increased acutely. —Ekeoma UzogaraStructured AbstractINTRODUCTIONRemote work has quadrupled in the half-decade since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there is a burgeoning literature examining remote work’s impact on workers’ productivity, less research considers its impact on workers’ well-being. We used differential changes in remote work across different occupations to assess remote work’s impact on isolation and mental health.RATIONALEWe compared postpandemic changes in isolation and mental health for workers in jobs amenable to remote work (“remotable” jobs; for example, software engineering and marketing) to changes among people in nonremotable jobs (such as mechanical engineering and nursing) using a difference-in-differences approach. This methodology leveraged the large, persistent increase in remote work for people in remotable jobs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift that was much more muted among those in nonremotable jobs. We focused on occupation-level shifts in remote work rather than personal choices, as decisions to work remotely may themselves reflect individuals’ mental health status. Our analysis drew on five representative surveys of Americans spanning the years 2011 to 2024 (N = 588,322), excluding the peak pandemic years of 2020–2021, and classified occupations by their remotability using the Dingel-Neiman index.RESULTSRelative to those in nonremotable jobs, workers in remotable jobs spent approximately one additional hour alone per workday after the pandemic. Those in remotable jobs also differentially increased days spent entirely alone and decreased after-work socializing.

The rise in isolation was sharpest for those living alone, whose likelihood of spending the whole day without social contact rose by 7 percentage points (83%).Mental distress simultaneously increased: Scores on the Kessler (K-6) measure of generalized psychological distress rose by 0.1 standard deviations for those in remotable jobs relative to those in nonremotable jobs. The increase in distress was roughly twice as large for those living alone compared with those living with family. Alternative measures of mental distress—such as the frequency of depression, mental health care utilization, and antidepressant prescriptions—show similar trends. In contrast, workers in remotable jobs did not differentially increase visits to non–mental health care providers or non–mental health prescriptions (statins, for example), suggesting that the change was not merely driven by increased flexibility for doctor visits.The results persist largely unchanged when controlling for occupations’ exposure to artificial intelligence and when focusing on within-individual changes in mental distress. We do not find similar mental health deterioration for workers who were recently, but were not currently, employed in remotable jobs, bolstering the argument that our results stem from the working arrangements themselves.The analyzed period saw a general increase in mental distress. Our analysis suggests that remote work accounts for roughly a third of that increase.CONCLUSIONOur results suggest that remote work substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone. Although a large body of research finds that workers want to work remotely, our findings suggest that workers may not realize the costs of remote work for their well-being, which may take time to accumulate. Understanding remote work’s impact on mental health is important for workers deciding where to work and for firms and governments setting remote-work policies.Time alone and mental distress increase more in remotable jobs.Comparing workers in remotable and nonremotable jobs demonstrates that remote work increases both time spent alone and mental distress, specifically among those who are not living with family.AbstractHow does remote work affect isolation and mental health? We drew on five nationally representative surveys of American workers (N = 588,322) conducted from 2011 to 2024, omitting the peak pandemic years of 2020–2021.

Our difference-in-differences approach compared changes in mental health among people in remotable jobs—who experienced a large and persistent rise in remote work since COVID-19—to people in nonremotable jobs, where remote work increased far less. We found that remote work increases time spent alone, worsens mental well-being across multiple measures, and increases the use of mental health services and prescriptions. These effects were concentrated among individuals living alone. We estimate that the rise of remote work explains about a third of the increase in isolation and mental distress between 2011–2019 and 2022–2024. SIGN UP FOR THE AWARD-WINNING SCIENCEADVISER NEWSLETTER The latest news, commentary, and research, free to your inbox daily Remote work has quadrupled in the half-decade since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising from 7% of American workers in 2019 to 28% in 2023 (1). This seismic shift in the structure of people’s days could affect not only their work but also their well-being.The impact of remote work on mental health is theoretically ambiguous. On the positive side, most workers say they enjoy remote work (2). A 2024 survey found that 55% of workers believed that hybrid work would be best for their mental health, while another 24% believed that fully remote work would be best (3). Workers typically report being willing to accept a 4 to 10% pay cut in exchange for the option to work remotely (4–6). Among workers who opt into remote work arrangements, studies have found that remote work increases workplace satisfaction, improves perceived work-life balance, and reduces attrition (7–9).On the negative side, evidence points to risks associated with remote work. In the US Census Bureau’s Summer 2022 Household Pulse Surveys, remote and hybrid workers were more likely than on-site workers to report symptoms of anxiety or depression, with 14% higher rates among remote workers and 9% higher rates among hybrid workers (10). One explanation is that working from home increases social isolation by limiting a key source of connection: the workplace.

Indeed, a 2022 survey found that adults were most likely to form friendships at work—more so than at places of worship or in neighborhoods, clubs, or their children’s schools (11). In his call to address “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy emphasized that “both social isolation and loneliness have been shown to independently increase the likelihood of depression or anxiety” (12). Medical studies have found that social isolation is a powerful predictor of mortality, on par with smoking or high blood pressure (13, 14). Yet relatively little attention has been paid to how the rise of remote work may contribute to greater social isolation and deteriorating mental health. Those gaps motivated this study’s research questions (RQs):RQ1: Did workers in jobs amenable to remote work (hereafter called “remotable”) versus workers in jobs that typically require on-site work (hereafter called “nonremotable”) experience differential changes in time spent alone?RQ1.1: Did effects on time spent alone differ on the basis of whether workers lived alone or cohabited with family?RQ2: Did workers in remotable jobs experience differential changes in mental distress compared with workers in nonremotable jobs?RQ2.1: Did effects on mental distress differ on the basis of whether workers lived alone or cohabited with family?To answer these questions, we drew on five nationally representative surveys of Americans spanning 2011 to 2024, excluding the peak pandemic years of 2020–2021 [N = 588,322; supplementary materials (SM) section A describes each dataset]. To isolate the effect of remote work, we leveraged the fact that COVID-19 generated a far larger and more persistent increase in remote work for people in remotable jobs—such as software engineering and marketing, which can be done from home—than for those in nonremotable jobs, such as mechanical engineering and nursing, which tend to require physical presence. We defined remotable occupations using the Dingel-Neiman remotability index (15). We then compared changes in isolation and mental health for those in remotable jobs our treatment group, to those in nonremotable jobs our best approximation of a control group (SM section B).

We focused on occupation-level shifts rather than personal choices about remote work, which may result from individuals’ mental health status.ResultsBefore the pandemic, workers in both remotable and nonremotable jobs spent relatively few days working from home. The pandemic led to a large increase in remote work for those in remotable jobs, such that by 2024, workers in remotable jobs spent 31.1% of workdays fully remote, whereas people in nonremotable jobs spent only 8.9% fully remote (Fig. 1). Those in remotable jobs experienced a 17.9 percentage point (pp) differential increase in fully remote work (P < 0.0001). Table S11 shows similarly large increases in other measures of remote work.Fig. 1. Shifts in remote work.Graph showing the percentage of workdays spent entirely remote for people in remotable and nonremotable occupations. We include three points for 2020 rather than just one to show the dynamics of the pandemic. The annotation shows the difference-in-differences point estimate from Eq. 1, which includes the controls listed in table S9 and excludes 2020 and 2021. The standard error, clustered at the occupation level, is in parentheses, and the percent change relative to the overall prepandemic mean is in square brackets. ***P < 0.01. Regression analyses with fixed effects and results using alternative measures of remote work are in table S11.RQ1: Shift toward time aloneAlong with spending less time in the office, workers in remotable jobs spent more time working alone after the pandemic, logging 1.2 more work hours alone per day relative to nonremotable workers (58.0% increase; P < 0.0001). Remote work thus shifted workers away from collaborative and toward solo work. Assuming that this differential shift was driven by days people worked from home, our two-stage least-squares estimate implies that people spent 6.6 additional hours working alone on remote days (6.6 = 1.17 hours/0.179 differential shift in remote work; see SM section B2 for methodology).