Quiet Quitting or Noisy Leisure? The Allocation of Time and Remote Work, 2019-2022

The proportion of employees who work remotely has surged from under 5% to over 60% between January to March 2020, converging to roughly 28% of days working from home versus in the office as of 2023. This paper studies the allocation of time among workers in varying degrees of remote work jobs. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey between 2019 and 2022, I document three main results. First, time allocated to leisure increased and to work decreased among more remote jobs with no significant change in home production. Second, these changes were concentrated among males, singles, and those without children. Third, workers in more remote jobs were also more satisfied with their life and better rested, suggesting that the increase in leisure was not driven by a quiet quitting' phenomenon