By Erin Petenko/VTDigger
Vermonters who work mostly from home earned 28% more than the average employee in the state in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau that was recently released.
Remote workers reported a median income of about $65,000 per year, well above the $51,000 median for all workers 16 and older, according to the bureau’s American Community Survey, which surveyed people from roughly 14,000 Vermont households in 2023.
The estimated 55,000 workers, 16% of the state’s workforce, who work remotely reported other clear differences from in-office workers: They are older, more likely to be women and more likely to work in professional, information-related or administrative roles.
Peter Nelson, a demographics researcher at Middlebury College, called the disparities a “fascinating phenomenon” that is “only going to become more pronounced in a place like Vermont,” where second-home owners are fairly common and may benefit from an ability to work remotely.
“On the one hand, our politicians would be clamoring to be able to claim that they created 55,000 jobs that pay, on average, $65,000 a year. That’s what people dream of,” he said. “But at the same time, we’ve seen in [this] state what the impact of the arrival of higher-earning populations have had on our very limited housing supply.”
Vermont officials have tried to promote migration to the state through programs like a remote worker reimbursement, arguing new working residents are essential to Vermont’s economy and future. But migration during the Covid-19 pandemic appears to have played a role in rising housing demand, according to the state’s latest housing report, driving up prices and lowering the availability of apartments and homes.
It’s hard to say how many work-from-home Vermonters were working for out-of-state companies in 2023, since the Census does not track each respondent’s employer.
There are other caveats, too. Since the data is self-reported, different respondents may have different definitions of whether they are “working from home,” including those that may actually go into a physical workplace a few days a week.
However, Nelson said the data appears to correspond to unsurprising patterns in the breakdown by occupation and industry. Vermonters in professional, managerial or finance-based roles were more likely to work remotely, likely because their profession makes it easier to do so. Occupations like retail work, manufacturing and construction were less likely to work remotely.
Nelson said he can do his work as a professor almost anywhere, meanwhile, “a plumber that works for the college isn’t much use if that plumber stays at home.”
The data also reveals trends in the demographics of remote workers. They tend to be slightly older, which Nelson said suggested that more senior employees were more likely to have flexibility around working remotely. He gave the example of someone who has worked at a firm in Boston, then moved to Vermont and took their clients with them.
About 54% of remote workers were women, compared with 49% of the overall workforce. That could be due to women choosing to work from home to accommodate their greater domestic load, Nelson said.
“We know within households, the distribution of domestic responsibilities isn’t shared equally,” he said.
But he cautioned that at-home businesses like child care, which are women-dominated, could also skew the data.
In-person workers had an average one-way commute time of 24 minutes, the data showed. The vast majority drove their own car to work, at 81%, with about 10% carpooling and the rest biking, walking or taking some form of public transportation.
Despite the fact that remote workers did not use their cars to commute, they were about as likely as the average worker to have access to one or more cars.
“That’s another indication of class differentiation,” Nelson said. “They’re not working from home because they’re stuck at home. They’re working at home by choice.”
The Census only published data by county for a 5-year average, due to the smaller sample sizes. Between 2019 and 2023, remote work tended to be highest in Chittenden, Washington and Windham counties, and lower in Rutland County and the Northeast Kingdom. The rate loosely correlated to broadband access and the percent of workers in professional roles.
While the divide between remote and in-person workers may be the result of long-term divides in the workforce, it could also deepen them, allowing remote workers additional privileges like commuting cost savings and housing flexibility.
“Privilege enables more privilege,” Nelson said.
The divide may already be changing how and when Vermont’s second-home owners come to the state. In a preliminary study of mobile phone location data, Nelson found that second-home owners have been visiting at less predictable times and staying for longer since the onset of the pandemic.
He believed that shift could be in part the result of remote work making it easier for visitors to be flexible in their timing.
“It wasn’t like everyone arrived in July and then left in December or January,” like the classic “snowbirds,” he said. “What seems to be happening in places like the amenity destinations of Vermont or Colorado is that the rhythms have shifted, and the length of time that people are spending in what you would describe as a second home location is extending.”
