Remote Work In Latin America And The Caribbean After The Pandemic: What Does The Data Show?
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After the pandemic-driven surge, remote work stabilized at lower levels: in 2025, around 4% of job postings in Latin America offered this option.
According to a new IDB study, a gap persists between the potential for remote work and its actual use: in the region, around 12% of workers could work remotely, compared with approximately 4% who actually do.
Access to remote work is greater among professionals, highly skilled workers, and salaried employees, and varies considerably by occupational and educational profile.
By Maria Teresa Silva Porto Diaz
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to work from home, we took part in a global-scale experiment: remote work became the new normal. After some initial challenges, several of its advantages became increasingly apparent: greater flexibility to balance work and household responsibilities, more employment opportunities for people with mobility constraints, less time spent commuting, and the potential to reduce absenteeism and workplace accidents.
These benefits fueled expectations that remote work was here to stay and could even provide an opportunity to move toward more inclusive and productive labor markets.
Six years later, what has happened in Latin America and the Caribbean? How many workers in the region work remotely, and who are they? Have these opportunities materialised?
In our new book, Making Labor Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Workers' Welfare in Latin America and the CaribbeanAfter the Surge: How common is remote work in Latin America and the Caribbean today?
Before 2020, remote work was extremely uncommon in the region: just 1% or less of monthly job postings mentioned it as an option. The arrival of COVID-19 caused that figure to surge in every country with available information. According to estimates from the IDB's Labor ObservatoryIn recent years, remote work appears to have stabilised at considerably lower levels than during the pandemic: between 1 percent and 7 percent of job postings offer remote work, with a regional average of just 4 percent in 2025. Household surveys from countries such as Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panama, and Uruguay show similar levels for 2024.
The data also reveal differences compared with the United States: while around 4 percent of workers in Latin America report working remotely, approximately 19.5 percent of workers in the United States reported working from home in 2024-nearly five times the Latin American average. There are also differences in the frequency of remote work: a university-educated worker in the United States works from home an average of 1.6 days per week, compared with just one day in Mexico.
The gap between those who can work remotely and those who actually do
In Making Labor Markets Work, we analyse the gap between workers whose occupations are compatible with remote work-the theoretical rate-and those who actually work remotely-the effective rate. In Guatemala, for example, an estimated 7 percent of workers could work remotely, but only 4 percent actually do. In Panama, the potential reaches 14 percent, but the effective rate is only around 5 percent.
What factors may be limiting the use of remote work? Employers in the region point to several obstaclesWho works remotely in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Around 70 percent of remote workers have some level of university education, although this group accounts for just 17.6 percent of total employment in the region. There are also significant differences in the potential for remote work: while more than half of managers and professionals could work remotely, only one in ten workers in agriculture, industry, transportation, or manual occupations would have that option. Similarly, remote work is much more common among salaried employees than among the self-employed.
In other words, access to remote work varies considerably by occupational profile and education level and is more common among professionals and highly-skilled workers.
Women are also more likely to work remotely. A study conducted in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina a pay cut of up to 10 percent for a fully remote position. Among men, by contrast, the study found no significant willingness to accept lower pay in exchange for this work arrangement. These differences in how workers value flexibility could have implications for wage gaps if they translate into differences in compensation.
The future of remote work in the region
A survey conducted in Latin America
Expanding access to remote work in the region requires progress on several fronts: improving connectivity; strengthening organisational practices that harness workplace flexibility while maintaining productivity and worker well-being, and designing care policies that support workplace flexibility without widening inequalities between men and women in the distribution of caregiving responsibilities. Progress in these areas could help the region make better use of the potential of remote work-particularly hybrid work-as a tool to expand opportunities and foster more productive labor markets.
Find more data and strategies for building more productive labor markets and improving worker well-being in our publication: Making Labor Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Workers' Welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean
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