The number of people primarily working from home tripled between 2019 and 2021, according to estimates released today by the US Census Bureau.

In the US, there were 27.6 million people working primarily from home in 2021, up from roughly 9 million in 2019, according to the Census Bureau.

“Work and commuting are central to American life, so the widespread adoption of working from home is a defining feature of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Michael Burrows, statistician in the Census Bureau’s Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch. “With the number of people who primarily work from home tripling over just a two-year period, the pandemic has very strongly impacted the commuting landscape in the United States.”

States with the highest percentage of home-based workers were Washington, 24.2%; Maryland, 24.0%; Colorado, 23.7%; and Massachusetts, 23.7%.

Among large metropolitan areas with 1 million or more residents, those with the highest percentage of home-based workers were the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area in California and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area in California, both at roughly 35% of workers doing their work from home. Both metro areas also have strong links to the information and technology sectors.

Because of the large number of people working from home, the average one-way travel time for commutes by private vehicle in the US fell to 25.6 minutes in 2021 from 27.6 minutes in 2019.