After record surge, Seattle sees sharp drop in remote work

The era of remote work, ushered in by the pandemic, isn’t going away anytime soon. But new census data suggests that it’s passed its peak. And in Seattle, the share of folks working remotely fell more sharply last year than it did across the nation as a whole.

Census data released this month shows the number of Seattle residents who worked remotely most days fell from an estimated 165,000 in 2022 to about 133,000 last year, a 20% decline.

Even with those falling numbers, remote workers still made up 28.5% of the 466,000 working people who live in Seattle, which is a huge share. But that’s down from 36% in 2022.

Nationally, around 22.5 million Americans worked remotely in 2023, down by about 1.9 million from 2022. That represents a drop of 8%, far smaller than the decline in Seattle.

Amazon, Seattle’s largest employer, surely played a role here. Starting in May 2023, the company required employees to work from the office at least three days a week. The company this month announced employees would have to be in the office five days a week starting next year.

While the number of Seattle residents working remotely fell last year, we’re still a long way off from the prepandemic era. In 2019, only around 36,000, or 8% of Seattle residents in the workforce, worked remotely.

As fewer people worked remotely, more had to show up in person, and census data shows how they got there.

Public transit was the biggest gainer in the raw number of commuters. Around 66,000 Seattle residents used transit to commute most days in 2023, up by more than 13,000, or 25.7% from the year before.

Even so, transit use is still way down from 2019, when around 116,000 city residents took the train, bus or some other form of public transit to work most days. This situation isn’t unique to Seattle. Across the nation, public transit systems are struggling to recover from the pandemic.

Driving alone to work, meanwhile, barely increased last year. About 180,000 drove to work solo in their cars last year, up by 9,000 from 2022, or 5% — but that estimated increase is not statistically significant.

Even so, driving alone remains the primary commute mode for Seattle residents, at around 39% of commuters, but the numbers remain lower than before the pandemic. In 2019, 205,000 Seattle residents, or 44.5%, drove to work alone most days.

Two other commute modes saw significant increases last year: Walking and carpooling. Bicycling, however, didn’t experience much of a rebound.

About 39,000 Seattle residents walked to work most days in 2023, up by more than 6,000, or a 19% increase. But that’s still far below the estimated 49,000 who walked to work in 2019.

Carpooling was nearly back to prepandemic levels after a surprisingly big jump last year. About 28,000 Seattle residents carpooled most days in 2023. That’s up by around 8,000, or 40%, from 2022. The new number isn’t too far off from 2019, when around 31,000 Seattle residents carpooled. It’s likely the continued high cost of gasoline in Seattle contributed to carpooling’s resurgence.

Biking to work, on the other hand, didn’t have much of a bounce back last year. Nearly 13,000 Seattle residents typically biked to work in 2023, up by about 1,300, or 12%, from 2022. That small estimated increase was not statistically significant. In 2019, around 17,000 Seattleites biked to work most days.

Of the roughly 466,000 Seattle residents in the workforce in 2023, about 54% were men and 46% were women. But there wasn’t much difference between men and women in terms of commute modes, with one exception: Bicycling. Men were twice as likely as women to bike to work.

Travel time to work was roughly the same in 2023 as it was the year before, at an average of 25.5 minutes each way. But that’s lower than before the pandemic. In 2019, the average was 28 minutes.

People who work from home are not included in the calculations for commute times, so they don’t directly affect the average. But the fact that fewer commuters are on the road is likely the main reason commute times have eased since the pandemic.