Remote Work in Latin America and the Caribbean After the Pandemic: What Does the Data Show?

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 materialized?

In our new book, Making Labor Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Workers’ Welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean, we find that remote work did expand, but only to a limited extent and very unevenly across countries, sectors, and population groups. In this blog post, we discuss our main findings and what is needed to expand access and harness its potential.

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 Observatory, between 10% and 35% of workers in Latin America and the Caribbean worked remotely at some point. However, beginning in the second half of 2021, as mobility restrictions were gradually lifted, this trend began to reverse.

In recent years, remote work appears to have stabilized at considerably lower levels than during the pandemic: between 1% and 7% of job postings offer remote work, with a regional average of just 4% 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% of workers in Latin America report working remotely, approximately 19.5% 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.

In Making Labor Markets Work, we analyze 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% of workers could work remotely, but only 4% actually do. In Panama, the potential reaches 14%, but the effective rate is only around 5%.

What factors may be limiting the use of remote work? Employers in the region point to several obstacles: labor regulations (mentioned by 15.4%), the risk of widening inequalities between those who can work remotely and those whose occupations do not allow it (12.8%), internet connectivity problems (10.3%), and difficulties supervising teams remotely (7.7%). Together, these represent a combination of regulatory, infrastructure, and organizational culture barriers.

Around 70% of remote workers have some level of university education, although this group accounts for just 17.6% 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 shows that women place a higher value on workplace flexibility and would be willing to accept a pay cut of up to 10% 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.

A survey conducted in Latin America shows a clear preference among workers for flexible work arrangements: seven out of ten respondents would choose remote or hybrid work, with a stronger preference for hybrid arrangements. However, as the data above show, the adoption of remote work in the region remains limited.

Expanding access to remote work in the region requires progress on several fronts: improving connectivity; strengthening organizational 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.