Remote work and geographic mobility have surged in the US since 2020. This column examines trends for both and discusses the potential electoral implications. The authors find that remote work opportunities are disproportionately located in left-leaning areas, state-movers are 45% more likely to work remotely, and that since 2020, cross-state movers have primarily relocated from blue to red states. If movers bring their political preferences, this could substantially impact the close 2024 election.
The 2024 US presidential election is taking place amid a significant shift in the political landscape, driven by increased geographic mobility and the rise of remote work (Bick et al. 2024, Ramani and Bloom 2021, Hansen et al. 2023, Barrero et al. 2021, Akan et al. 2024).
In this column we highlight substantial movement from left-leaning areas to right-leaning states and counties since 2020. Within states, people are moving from blue cities to purple suburbs. Across states, many are leaving places like California and New York for the likes of Florida and Texas. While remote work has facilitated this shift, other factors such as taxes, housing costs, amenities, and pandemic policies also contributed to uneven patterns of geographic mobility since 2020.
Using data from the American Communities Survey (ACS), job ad text analysis, the MIT Election Lab, the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI), and our calculations, we uncover five key findings:
- Remote work and geographic mobility have surged post-2020
- Remote work opportunities are disproportionately located in left-leaning areas
- State-movers are 45% more likely to work remotely
- Since 2020, cross-state movers have primarily relocated from blue to red states
- The political consequences of this migration may be significant, especially in Florida and Georgia
Our final fact is based on our own back-of-the-envelope calculations which give a stylised quantification to the potential electoral consequences across key battleground states. For example, Florida is becoming more left-leaning, while Georgia may shift rightward.
These are not predictions, but rather a thought experiment highlighting the potential political influence of remote work and rising geographic mobility. Many caveats apply.
This column is laid out as follows. We first examine the post-2020 remote work and mobility surge, then the geographic concentration of remote jobs, followed by state-movers’ propensity for remote work and the blue-to-red state migration trend, before discussing the potential electoral implications.
Remote work and migration both rose rapidly since COVID-19
Figure 1 shows that the share of Americans who reported moving to a different state in the previous year increased by 12.5% between 2019 and 2022 (left panel), while the fraction of individuals who reported working from home (right panel) increased four-fold. The data for both series come from the Census Bureau’s large, representative Annual Communities Survey (ACS), and we report data for working-age (16-65) non-military persons. These findings have been corroborated by other research using various alternative data sources, and they represent the most significant and compressed increase in either series on record (Barrero et al. 2021, Bick et al. 2024, Ozimek et al. 2020).
Figure 1 A rise in Americans who moved state (left) and who report they usually work from home (right)
Note: Data from the 2017-2022 Annual American Community Survey (ACS), a representative survey of over 2 million households annually. Remote work is measured based on responses to “How did you usually get to work last week?” considering those who responded “Worked from home.” We exclude respondents with military occupations, those who lived abroad in the prior year, and limit the sample to people aged between 18-64. Calculations are weighted at the respondent level to the US population.
The rise in remote work has been a key driver of increased geographic mobility. As more people gain the ability to work from anywhere, they are no longer tied to living near their place of employment (Altoff et al. 2021). This newfound flexibility has allowed many workers to prioritise other factors when choosing where to live, such as housing affordability, quality of life, and proximity to family and friends (Florida and Ozimek 2021).
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote work and further untethered workers from their physical offices (Akan et al. 2024, Bartik et al. 2020). Many companies that were previously hesitant to allow remote work have now embraced it as a long-term arrangement (Barrero et al. 2021). This shift in corporate culture and policies has made it easier for employees to relocate without sacrificing their job prospects.
The combination of these factors – the rapid rise in remote work opportunities and the increasing willingness of workers to relocate – has led to a significant reshaping of the American workforce’s geographic distribution (Ramani and Bloom 2021). As we will explore in the following sections, this shift has had notable implications for the political landscape, as workers move from traditionally left-leaning urban centres to more right-leaning suburban and rural areas.
Remote work opportunities are heavily concentrated in left-leaning areas
We begin by demonstrating that opportunities for remote work are disproportionately located in left-leaning areas. Figure 2 presents a bin scatter plot using data from millions of online job postings across US counties. The green circles represent county-level data for 2023, while the blue triangles show data for 2019. In 2019, there appears to be no relationship between a county’s political leaning and the prevalence of remote work opportunities. However, in 2023, we observe a substantial increase in remote work opportunities, and this growth is heavily concentrated in counties that voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
Figure 2 Opportunities to work remotely have increased dramatically since 2020, and are highly concentrated in left-leaning counties
Note: Data from Hansen et al. (2023) measuring the fraction of new online job adverts explicitly offering one or more days of remote work. Twenty-one bins from 2019 and 2023 report the mean of county-level Democratic (Biden) vote share in 2020 (x-axis) and the mean county share of new job ads explicitly offering remote work (y-axis).
The high concentration of remote work opportunities in left-leaning areas has made it increasingly feasible for workers to live farther from their workplace. In some cases, the physical link between home and work is completely severed, with employees working entirely remotely. Even when workers visit the office a few times a week, they are often willing to tolerate longer commutes in exchange for more affordable housing, better amenities, and, in many instances, lower taxes. This shift in the geographic distribution of job opportunities has significant implications for where people choose to live and work.
State-movers are far more likely to work from home
Figure 3, based on ACS data, reveals that workers who moved to a different state in 2021-22 are over 40% more likely to work from home compared to those who stayed within their state, highlighting the strong link between remote work and long-distance relocation.
Figure 3 People who moved across states in 2021-22 are 50% more likely to be working from home
Note: Data from the 2023 Annual American Community Survey (ACS), a representative survey of over 2 million households. Remote work is measured based on responses to “How did you usually get to work last week?” considering those who responded “Worked from home.” We exclude military occupations and non-citizens from the data. Calculations are weighted at the respondent level to the US population.
Remote work has expanded job opportunities geographically and allowed people to seek improved quality of life through housing affordability, space, and amenities. Those already working mostly from home may have felt freer to relocate, while some may have actively sought remote jobs to facilitate a move.
The connection between remote work and mobility is most evident for state-level movers, suggesting that remote work flexibility is particularly influential in driving longer-distance relocations. For within-state movers, factors like housing preferences and local amenities may play a larger role.
Americans are leaving more left-leaning areas since 2020
Using IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data on county-to-county worker migration and MIT Election Lab data on 2020 county-level voting, we calculate the Democratic vote share difference between destination and origin counties for all county pairs. Weighting this by worker flows, we create a mobility-weighted average of this difference.
Figure 4 shows that in 2014, this average was near zero, meaning migration left the political balance largely unchanged. However, it began to decline, indicating more people moving from blue to red counties. Post-2020, this trend accelerated sharply, coinciding with increased overall mobility.
Figure 4 More workers than ever are leaving blue states for red and purple states post-2020
Note: Data from the IRS’s Statistics of Income (SOI), reporting the source and destination counties for all movers based on tax filings. For each person who moved states, we calculate the Democratic vote share in both origin and destination counties, subtracting the former from the latter. We report the person-weighted mean across years. A negative number means, on average, people moved from “blue” areas to “red” areas.
Figure 5 highlights worker inflows into key battleground states by origin county political leaning. Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have seen significant influxes from left-leaning areas, with fewer from purple or red counties. If movers bring their political preferences, this could substantially impact the close 2024 election.
Figure 5 Workers who migrated into battleground states from 2020-2022 are overwhelming from blue-leaning counties
Note: Data from the IRS’s SOI. Bars report the total number of workers who migrated into selected swing states between 2020 and 2022, broken down according to the Biden vote share in the 2020 election of their origin county.
Within states, workers are also moving from dense, left-leaning city centres to more right-leaning or ‘purple’ suburbs (the ‘donut effect’; Ramani and Bloom 2021). Figure 6 illustrates this in New York and San Francisco using SOI data. This shift could sway congressional districts and local races.
Figure 6 Within states, workers are leaving densely populated left leaning-areas in favour of more purple suburban locations
Note: Data from the IRS’s SOI. Maps show the summed net population outflow across 2020/21 and 2021/22 tax years as a percentage of county population for the New York and Bay Area Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs). E.g. the light green shading for Manhattan indicates that across the two tax years, there was a net outflow of between 2 and 4% of the population of Manhattan. Negative numbers indicate that the population of that county grew over the two tax years.
Simple calculations reveal potential battleground state swings
In Figure 7 we document some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the potential impacts of migration since 2021-2022 in battle ground states. Our calculations perform the following steps: (1) we assume people carry the behaviour of their origin county with them; (2) we use 2020 major party vote shares and turnout at the county level to assign preference, i.e. if someone leaves a county which had an 80% republican vote share in 2020, and 50% turnout, then this person counts for 0.4 republican votes and 0.1 democratic votes; (3) we add and subtract these votes based on all the people who moved in and out of each state; (4) we calculate how this would impact the total votes in each state relative to the 2020 electoral outcome.
Figure 7 Most battle ground states will swing left due to migration patterns in 2020-2022 (assuming people carry their origin-location preferences with them)
Note: Data from IRS SOI, MIT Election Lab, 2020 Census, and authors’ calculations. Swings based on 2020-2022 state inflows and outflows, assuming migrants maintain origin county political preferences (turnout and voting). Analysis excludes 2023-24 migration and doesn’t consider factors like destination selection based on political preferences. These patterns should be captured in representative polls; our analysis doesn’t offer additional predictive power beyond such polls.
Importantly, our analysis does not supersede accurate polling, though migrants may be underrepresented due to data lags. Polls show Democrats/Harris down nearly 20 points in strongholds like California and New York, suggesting massive preference shifts, methodology changes, or demographic moves. The latter would imply offsetting upswings elsewhere.
For simplicity, our estimates assume movers don’t self-select into like-minded areas and that destination preferences don’t shape behaviour (though Cantoni et al. 2022 suggest this does occur over longer timescales).
Our assumption-driven calculations highlight potential electoral impacts. Based on 2020 vote margins, and taking our simple calculations in a vacuum, these would imply that Florida flips blue and Georgia red in 2024.
Conclusion
The 2024 US presidential election is imminent, and in many ways highly unusual. The rise of remote work and the geographic movement of millions of Americans is yet one more feature that sets it apart. It’s unclear how exactly this shift will manifest, however the facts laid out suggest politics is yet one more area the remote work revolution will touch.
Source : VOXeu
