The Best – And Worst – States For Working From Home
All around the world, employers are embracing the idea of employees working from home. According to a survey from Enterprise Technology Research, the percentage of workers permanently working from home doubled in 2021.
If you’re working from home now, you’ve likely set up the home office to suit your every business need, but there could be a factor making remote work difficult – the state where you currently reside.
The personal finance website WalletHub just released a report on the Best States for Working from Home. The study indicates which areas are thriving – and which are struggling – in this pandemic economy and created a list of the ten best and ten worst states for remote workers.
Before diving into the lists, here’s how WalletHub collected their research:
To identify which states are most conducive to working from home, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 12 key metrics.
The data set ranges from the share of workers working from home before COVID-19 to internet cost and cybersecurity. We also considered factors like how large and how crowded homes are in the state.
Together, these metrics show how feasible working from home is in terms of cost, comfort and safety.
Here are the best states for remote workers, according to Wallet Hub’s findings:
- Delaware
- North Carolina
- Georgia
- New Hampshire
- Tennessee
- Arizona
- New Jersey
- Texas
- Utah
- Oregon
Connecticut – ranked the 15th best state for remote work – has the highest share of households with access to broadband speeds over 25 Mbps, 98.70 percent, which is 1.5 times higher than in Mississippi, the state with the lowest 65.40 percent.
New Hampshire has the highest share of households with a broadband internet subscription, 79.30 percent, which is 1.7 times higher than in Mississippi, the lowest at 47.60 percent.
Here are the worst states for remote workers from the study:
41. West Virginia
42. Iowa
43. New Mexico
44. Wyoming
45. Montana
46. Arkansas
47. Mississippi
48. North Dakota
49. Hawaii
50. Alaska
To see the complete list of the best and worst states to work from home, check Wallet Hub.