In Washington County, Higher Income Workers Are More Than Twice as Likely to Work from Home
May 04, 2026Working from home is far more common among higher-income Washington County resident workers. Among workers earning more than $75,000, 28% worked from home, compared with 12% of workers earning less than $35,000 in 2024.
Work from home also remained much more common than it was before the pandemic, holding steady in recent years. In 2024, about one in five workers (21%) worked from home most days. That is down from 30% in 2021, but still more than three times the 2019 rate of 7%.
Work from Home Settled Above the Pre-Pandemic Level
Washington County also remained more work from home heavy than Oregon and the nation. In 2024, 21% of Washington County workers worked from home, compared with 17% in Oregon and 13% in the United States. Among Oregon counties, only Multnomah County was higher, at 23%.
Work From Home Rates Vary by Income Level
Washington County resident workers earning more than $75,000 had a 28% work from home rate compared with 18% of those earning $35,000 to $75,000 and 12% of workers earning less than $35,000. Workers with lower or middle incomes were more likely to primarily ride public transportation, carpool, or walk to work. Across all three income groups, a majority of workers drive alone to work.
The Pandemic Opened a Persistent Income Gap
The income gap emerged in the pandemic. Before the pandemic, work from home rates were low and similar across income groups. In 2019, 8% of workers earning more than $75,000 worked from home, compared with 7% of workers earning less than $35,000.
The pandemic changed that pattern. In 2021, 47% of workers earning more than $75,000 worked from home, compared with 17% of workers earning less than $35,000. In 2024, the gap between the highest and lowest income groups was about 16 percentage points.
Industry Helps Explain Who Can Work From Home
Industries with more office, professional, and administrative jobs tend to have more work that can be done from home. Industries that depend more on production, transportation, or in-person customer service tend to have lower work from home rates. In Washington County, the highest work from home rate was in finance and real estate, where 44% of workers worked from home. The lowest rate was in leisure and hospitality, at 9%.
Remote Work Reflects Several Related Factors
Washington County’s pattern is consistent with broader research on remote work. Census Bureau research found that the U.S. work from home share had declined from its pandemic peak but remained more than double its pre-pandemic level, while home-based workers generally had higher earnings and lower poverty rates than other workers. A Federal Reserve note also found wide variation in remote-work use across states, industries, and occupations.
A Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia article notes that remote work remains a significant part of the U.S. labor market and that access to remote work varies by worker characteristics, industry, and region. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Statistics national 2024 data shows that work from home rates are much higher for those with a bachelor’s degree and higher.
Those findings point in the same direction as the Washington County data: work from home is tied to the kind of work people do and to the workers who are concentrated in remote-capable jobs. Income, industry, education, occupation, and geography are related to one another, so this article’s obersvations should be read as correlation rather than as cause and effect.
The estimates in this article come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates. The ACS asks workers how they usually traveled to work during their prior week. Workers who usually worked from home are counted as working from home. ACS 1-year estimates were not released for 2020.