Austin Among Nation's Best Cities To Work From Home

AUSTIN, TX — Austin is among the nation's best cities for working from home, according to a new study.

Analysts at SmartAsset ranked the capital city 9th among the nation's big cities for working from home in its report. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, remote work has become the norm for many Americans, researchers found, with surveys showing that about half of American workers were working from home in the late spring of 2020.

Many researchers believe that increased work flexibility may continue even after the pandemic subsides, according to the report, but some cities are better suited for telecommuting than others. In its third annual study, the New York City-based financial technology company, SmartAsset, crunched the numbers to find the best cities in the U.S. to work from home.

In cracking the top ten, researchers found Austin among cities that had among the most people working from home well before the pandemic. "Working from home was on the rise in Austin, Texas prior to COVID-19," researchers wrote. Indeed, the percentage of workers reporting they worked from home increased by 3.7 percent over five years, from 7.1 percent in 2014 to 10.8 percent in 2019. With that increase, Austin had the third-highest 2019 percentage of the workforce who worked from home across all 100 cities, according to the findings.

What's more, the study found employment in Austin has remained strong during COVID-19 relative to other cities. As of October 2020, the city's unemployment rate was 5.2 percent — the 14th-lowest of 100 of the largest cities and 1.5 percentage points lower than the national average.

In its annual study, SmartAsset researchers adjusted our methodology to account for the impact of COVID-19, including the addition of two metrics: The estimated percent of the workforce that is able to work from home and the percentage of residences with two or more bedrooms, among other changes.

To learn more about the rankings and data, read the full Best Cities to Work From Home in 2021 report.