Americans routinely say they relish the ability to work from home or remotely rather than commute to an office. Yet new research suggests that untethering yourself can come at a cost.

New research from Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Natalia Emanuel published in Science found that remote work, while often boosting productivity, also often leaves employees feeling socially isolated and leads to mental health issues. 

To be sure, polls consistently show that workers enjoy remote work and are even willing to sacrifice pay for greater flexibility. Workers in remote arrangements also commonly report increased job satisfaction and better work-life balance. But the longer-term costs of ditching the office are worth considering, Emanuel's research suggests. 

"We found that remote work increases time spent alone, worsens mental well-being across multiple measures, and increases the use of mental health services and prescriptions," the study states.

"Although a large body of research finds that workers want to work remotely, our findings suggest that workers may not realize the costs of remote work for their well-being, which may take time to accumulate," noted the authors, who drew on five national surveys of employees in a range of jobs.  

The cost of alone time

Remote work quadrupled from 7% of U.S. workers in 2019 to 28% in 2023, a shift mostly triggered by the pandemic.  

Over a roughly 10-year period before and after the pandemic, remote workers experienced a 58% rise in hours spent alone, compared to in-office workers, the New York Fed found. Remote workers also became significantly more likely to go a full day without any human contact. That meant "no idle chitchat with a barista, no hello from a co-worker, no smile from a passerby at the grocery store," the study states.

"When work became more isolated, people did not substantially compensate by socializing more outside of work hours, as also found elsewhere," the report's authors wrote. "As a result, the rise of remote work translated into large increases in overall time spent alone."

Remote workers living alone experienced an even more pronounced rise in isolation, according to the research. That isolation in turn affects workers' mental health, and accounts for some of the rise in mental distress across the U.S. between the pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic periods, the study found.

For example, remote workers visited mental healthcare providers more frequently than non-remote workers and were more likely to rely on prescription psychiatric medication. By contrast, researchers did not observe a similar rise in use of other drugs, like statins for high cholesterol.