Younger companies and leaders embrace more remote work, new study finds
Firms founded in the past decade have nearly twice the WFH rates of those started before 1990.
The companies most likely to let you work from home are the newest ones… or at least those helmed by the youngest leaders.
According to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published last week, employees at companies founded after 2015 are roughly twice as likely to work from home relative to firms that got their start before 1990.
Companies born in 2020 — the ones that had no choice but to build themselves around remote work from day 1 — had the highest remote working days on average, at 1.74 per week. While that trend has softened since, post-lockdown cohorts (2021-25) allowed employees to work from home an average of 1.6 days per week, well above the average of ~0.9 days of those founded before 1980.
Leadership age tells a similar story, as younger firms and CEOs tend to be more comfortable adopting new technologies and flexible ways of working. Firms run by CEOs under 30 have an average of 1.4 work-from-home days per week, compared to 1.1 days for those with CEOs who are 60 or older.
Still, that gap fades once firm age is factored in, suggesting it’s the birth year of the company — not its leader — that matters more.
And even as big incumbents keep doubling down on returning to the office, the study finds that WFH rates could tick higher over time as older firms cycle out: indeed, roughly half of US startups don’t survive past five years, per the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and the companies that replace them tend to be more remote-friendly from the start.
