The tedious process of commuting between home and work every day can be quite stressful — whether the worst co-workers are the cause of that stress — and the advent of the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic caused many employees and executives to work remotely from home or from another part of the world that was not in the office, using technology for teleconference calls or virtual meetings…
Where People Enjoy Working Remotely the Most in the United States and United Kingdom
…but where do people enjoy working remotely the most in the United States and the United Kingdom?
To find out the answer to that question, a list of keywords around the topic of home working was curated; and a “scraping” tool was used to find 1,270,459 messages on Twitter containing those terms. Any “spam” or duplicate messages from Twitter — as well as those which were posted by users whose locations could not be identified from their profiles — were removed, leaving 610,661 located messages from Twitter.
The HuggingFace sentiment analysis tool was then used to find positive and negative messages on Twitter, which were then labeled as “negative” if the probability of “negative” was higher than 0.5; and “positive” if the probability of “positive” was higher than 0.5.
Finally, the percentage of positive and negative messages from Twitter for every state in the United States, top cities in the United States and United Kingdom, and boroughs of London was calculated. At the city-level for both the United States and United Kingdom, the top 50 most populous cities of a country was started but removed those with fewer than 100 messages from Twitter, thereby replacing them with the next most populous cities that met the threshold criteria.
The data was collected in May 2022.
This article which was written by Lotte van Rijswijk from Resume.io highlights where people enjoy working remotely the most in the United States and the United Kingdom; and I have been given express written permission to use the graphs and the verbatim text from the aforementioned article in this article. While Resume.io has endeavored to ensure the information provided is accurate and current, it cannot guarantee it, as this information is general in nature only and does not constitute personal advice. Neither Resume.io nor The Gate accept any liability — and assume no responsibility — for any and all information which is presented in this article.
With that disclaimer out of the way, here is the article.
Locations Where Workers in the United States and United Kingdom Most Enjoy Working From Home
There has been a home working revolution in the last three years. A perfect storm of emerging workplace technology, a global pandemic and a shift in attitude has transformed the perception of remote work.
According to a Gallup study, 45% of full-time employees in America are now working partly or fully remotely, and 91% of these people support their ability to work in this way.
Most Americans feel the home working revolution to date has been a success. PwC’s Remote Work Survey found that 83% of workers believe their company’s shift to remote working has been a positive thing. Evidence shows that it’s here to stay too. Upwork’s Future Workforce Report estimates that 40.7 million will be working fully remote in the next five years. Despite the support, not everyone can work remotely, and not everyone supports the philosophy.
What We Did
To better understand how the public feels about working from home in 2022, Resume.io has analyzed Twitter data in the UK and US to see where workers are most supportive and critical of remote work.
We analyzed more than 600,000 geotagged Twitter posts and used a sentiment-tracking AI called HuggingFace to determine whether posts about remote work were positive or negative. Want to find out where your city or state ranks? Read on.
Key Findings
- Residents of Delaware are most enthusiastic about remote work, with 46% of tweets supporting the policy.
- El Paso, TX, is America’s most positive city about WFH — 45.4% of posts are happy with the idea of remote work.
- There is considerable negative sentiment against remote work inBaltimore, MD, where 26% of tweets were critical of it.
- In the UK, residents of Watford and Brent – both located north of London, were most supportive of remote work — 58.3% and 54.9% of tweets in the areas respectively contained positive sentiment.
Residents of Delaware Are Happiest About Remote Working
Working from home has become more popular all across the US, but how do Americans really feel about it? Our research found that Delaware is the most optimistic state about remote working, with 46% of tweets about it containing positive sentiment.
Nestled between the major population centers of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, more than 10,000 people in the state commute for 90 minutes or more each day. With precious hours of the day potentially saved, it’s no surprise that Delawareans are keenest on remote work.
Meanwhile, residents of the Dakotas are less convinced. Both North (29.8%) and South (34.4%) display weaker levels of support for home working.
El Paso Locals Spared of Cross-Border Commute Support Home Working the Most
Located on the Rio Grande river, residents of El Paso, TX, have one of the toughest commutes found anywhere in the US. It shares a border with the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, and thousands of residents move between the two countries every day for work and education.
In 2017, 41 million people made the crossing, and heightened security checks on vehicles arriving from Mexico into Texas have brought the city’s traffic to a standstill. Residents describe the crossing as ‘inhumane.’
It’s no surprise then that 45.4% of tweets support home working. El Paso narrowly beats out Wichita, KS (45.4%) and Arlington, TX (42.3%) as America’s most supportive city when it comes to remote working.
Almost 60% of Brent Tweeters Love Remote Working
The remote working revolution has gripped London in the wake of the global pandemic. A study by King’s College London found that 84% of people in the capital who work from home at least once a week say that it has positively impacted their quality of life.
Residents of Brent are clearly supportive of this. Located in North London, our research found that 58.3% of Twitter posts about remote working in the borough contain positive sentiment – marginally more than nearby Haringey (56%).
London is at the heart of the remote working debate. While workers overwhelmingly support the policy, there are concerns it will make up to a fifth of office space in the capital redundant, with potentially damaging knock-on effects on the city’s economy — particularly in retail and hospitality.
Watford Residents Love Remote Work More than Any Other UK City
In Spring 2022, an ONS survey revealed that 38% of UK working adults are still working from home at least once a week — up from 12% prior to the pandemic. Of the 50 largest cities in Britain, we found that residents of Watford in Hertfordshire love remote work the most — 54.9% of tweets about it in the area have positive sentiment.
The city is in prime commuter belt territory. Located 15 miles from central London, Watford has the M25 orbital road on its doorstep and is the 3rd busiest train station in the East of England region.
Next on the list was Warrington in Cheshire, where 51.6% of tweets support remote working. The city is equidistant between the commercial centers of Liverpool and Manchester. Huddersfield (45.5%) was third on the list and is similarly placed between larger cities — Manchester and Leeds.
Which US Cities Love and Hate Remote Working?
A Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of Americans who can work remotely in their job said they would prefer to continue doing so once the Coronavirus pandemic was over. However, 60% of the workforce have jobs that cannot be done from home, and not everyone supports the shift.
By contrast to the 45.4% of posts in support of home working in El Paso, TX,Baltimore locals are more critical. 26.7% of tweets in Maryland’s largest city contain negativity. Philadelphians feel the same way, with critical sentiment at 26.4%.
Which UK Cities Love and Hate Remote Working?
The future of remote work continues to divide people in Britain. Fewer than 1 in 10 workers say they want to return to the office five days a week, despite encouragement from government ministers for people to be back at their desks.
While 54.9% of commuter belt employees in Watford support home working, locals in Swansea are far less convinced. 29.2% of tweets in the south Wales town contain negative sentiment — more than anywhere else in the UK. Swansea’s workforce contains above-average levels of education, health, and retail staff, according to figures from the Welsh government.
Working From Home — Love It or Loathe It?
Whether you love or hate working from home, there is no doubt it is here to stay. The days of 9 to 5, five days a week on a consistent basis are over for many, especially if you work in an office. The culture has changed the dynamic in workforces from multinational corporations to tiny start-ups.
The advantages are plenty and obvious. No stressful commutes. More time at home with family. The ability to work at your own pace without constant oversight from bosses hovering around your desk. However, many companies have found it challenging to build a strong team culture. 60% of respondents in the Pew Research Center survey said working from home made them feel less connected to their co-workers.
Whether you support a full-time return to the office, hybrid work or fully-remote teams, check through our full data set below to see how your city or local area feels about working from home.
Final Boarding Call
Thankfully, I have not had to commute to work on a regular basis in years — the commutes which I endured for years lasted between one hour and two hours each way, every day — but on occasion, I do have to drive in rush hour traffic to get to a destination; and I am reminded about how much I disliked commuting to an office.
Working from home does have its disadvantages — but to trade it for the return of commuting to an office would require a lot of benefits for me to even consider doing that again.
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
