America has been experiencing a productivity boom for the past five years, and economists are debating what’s driving it.
Stanford University economics professor and leading remote-work researcher Nicholas Bloom has one theory: remote work is playing a major role.
In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Bloom shared a recent Economist article examining the sharp rise in US productivity since 2020, noting that this predates the widespread adoption of AI tools.
Bloom said working from home has helped lift output across the US economy in ways many executives still underestimate.
“WFH often raises productivity in A/B trials,” Bloom wrote, pointing to research showing employees are often able to focus better at home while avoiding long commutes and office distractions.
While many companies have pushed return-to-office mandates on the belief that in-person work improves collaboration and performance, Bloom said that the broader economic data points in the opposite direction.
He said remote work may be boosting productivity by helping employees focus, lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, and expanding access to the labor market.
The productivity rebound
US productivity growth has surprised economists in recent years.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows US nonfarm business-sector labor productivity — a measure of how much output workers produce per hour — jumped 5.3% in 2020, rose 2% in 2021, fell 1.5% in 2022, then rebounded with gains of 1.8% in 2023, 3% in 2024, and 2.2% in 2025, marking a sharp turnaround from the sluggish productivity growth that defined much of the post-financial-crisis decade.
The BLS also said labor productivity in the current business cycle has grown faster than during the previous one. Total factor productivity — which measures efficiency gains from labor, capital, and innovation combined — grew 1% annually between 2019 and 2025, above the 0.6% pace recorded between 2007 and 2019.
While AI has dominated corporate conversations around productivity in recent months, Bloom said over the past five years, remote work may have boosted productivity by helping employees focus and cut commuting time, encouraging entrepreneurship by lowering the barriers to starting businesses, and expanding the labor force by making jobs more accessible.
“So the next time a business leader claims WFH is bad for productivity, point them to the data,” he said.
‘WFH is correlated with higher productivity growth’
Bloom’s comments come as a growing number of major employers — including Amazon, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Dell, Starbucks, and TikTok — continue tightening return-to-office mandates, with many executives saying that in-person work leads to stronger collaboration, faster decision-making, better training for younger employees, and a healthier corporate culture.
While JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently said remote work “doesn’t work” for many younger employees because they learn best by observing senior colleagues in person, Skims cofounder Emma Grede went further, calling working from home “career suicide” and linking remote work to broader social issues such as loneliness and declining relationship formation.
Some economists say the productivity rebound may also reflect a more stable labor market, stronger business investment, and workers becoming more experienced in their roles after years of pandemic-era disruption.
Not everyone agreed with Bloom’s interpretation of the data.
Markus Shayeb, managing director at commercial real estate firm TRI Commercial, questioned on LinkedIn whether the productivity gains may instead coincide with the recent rise in return-to-office mandates and the decline in fully remote workdays.
Others said the productivity boom reflects a broader technological shift rather than remote work alone.
Rolando Rosas, founder of technology consultancy Global Teck Worldwide, said the rise of better digital tools, cloud software, and modern workplace technology had converged with the work-from-home era to make employees more productive.
However, Bloom, one of the world’s most prominent researchers on remote work, suggested the broader economic data may tell a different story.
“WFH is correlated with higher productivity growth,” he said in a comment.
