The portion of people working from home in Montgomery County last year ranked fifth in the nation compared to all other counties, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Just over 37% of residents in Montgomery County worked remotely last year. The findings resulted from the 2021 American Community Survey, which provides annual estimates based on questionnaires filled out by roughly 3.5 million American households.
Three of the top five work-from-home counties in the nation in 2021 were in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The District had the highest proportion of people working from home. Fairfax County, Va., ranked fourth at 37.2% and Montgomery County rounded out the top five.
Of all 50 states, Maryland saw the second highest proportion of residents working from home in 2021. Roughly 24% of Maryland residents worked remotely last year. Other states with the highest percentage of home-based workers were Washington with 24.2% and Colorado with 23.7%.
Last year marked the highest number and percentage of people working from home in America since the American Community Survey began in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of Americans who worked from home also tripled over a two-year period due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Work and commuting are central to American life, so the widespread adoption of working from home is a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Michael Burrows, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch, said in a September press release on the data.
