The pandemic-induced surge in work-from-home (WFH) has shaken the foundations of existing regional development models (Althoff et al., 2022; Barrero et al., 2023; Lee, 2023; Ramani & Bloom, 2021). The concept that ‘people follow jobs’ wherever those jobs may be located (Østbye et al., 2018; Sassen, 2018) no longer holds true for jobs that can be remotely accessed. Likewise, the ‘creative class’ theory – which predicts that ‘jobs follow people’ to thriving, lifestyle locations (Florida, 2002) – has also been upended by WFH. The decoupling of jobs and population also has knock-on effects for corporate spatial strategy, drawing into question whether ‘global cities’ such as New York and Los Angeles remain ‘Superstar’ growth poles for both people and jobs. As described by Sassen (2013), global cities have historically played a pivotal role in the global economy, acting as major hubs for finance and corporate services. However, the landscape is changing. Kemeny and Storper (2024) highlight the evolving spatial income disparities and the shifting growth dynamics across U.S. cities, indicating that not all traditional growth poles continue to attract population and job growth as they once did.
The rapid rise of WFH has complicated the picture so much that a detailed analysis of the most recent data is needed to uncover any new trends, which may later coalesce into theory. Perhaps the disruption to conventional work patterns experienced during the pandemic has served to accelerate trends that were already set in motion during the preceding decades (Kemeny & Storper, 2024). This includes fully remote work, but also unconventional schedules that disrupt standard Monday-to-Friday routines (Allen et al., 2024; Hopkins & Bardoel, 2023). Even prior to the pandemic, those able to reduce their workplace presence were already relocating to suburbs with more affordable housing options at the expense of a longer but less frequent commute (Bjerke et al., 2024; Brueckner et al., 2023; Ory & Mokhtarian, 2005; Rhee, 2009). Others left their regions of employment entirely, moving to places best suited to their lifestyle and personal preferences (Akatsuka & Toyoda, 2023; Denham, 2021; Haslag & Weagley, 2022).
In this study, we analyse how the pandemic (and the resulting WFH) has reoriented the distribution of jobs and population in the United States at three scales: urban, regional, and national. We compare the immediate pre-pandemic period (2016-2019) to the pandemic and post-pandemic period (2019-2022), focusing more on the latter. More specifically, this study aims to:
1. Understand the relationship between regional changes in jobs and population.
2. Determine the relationship between WFH and the regional distribution of jobs and population.
3. Characterise the determinants of regional job and population changes.
For our analysis, we leverage comprehensive datasets from the American Community Survey and the Bureau of Economic Analysis to perform ‘K-means clustering’ and ‘robust linear regression’. We use counties as the unit of analysis, which we classify based on their size into (a) Large Central Counties, in other words, major cities (b) Large Fringe Counties, meaning the suburbs of large cities (c) Medium and Small Counties, known as towns or smaller cities in common parlance and (c) Non-core Counties, denoting predominantly rural regions. This approach allows us to understand the relationship between job availability and population movement in the context of growing WFH practices.