Work-from-Home Workforce Shrinks in Capital Region

More than 14,000 workers in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metropolitan statistical area (MSA) stopped working from home in 2022, though the region’s WFH ranks remained more than double what they were before the pandemic, according to a Center for Economic Growth Analysis of new one-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

In 2022, an estimated 65,856 people worked from home in the five-county Albany metro area. That was a 17.5 percent decline from the previous year but 43,001 above 2019’s total. In 2022, there were more people working from home in the metro area than those carpooling, using public transit, and walking, bicycle, motorcycle, taxicab and other means, combined.

Among the state’s 12 metro areas, the Glens Falls MSA had the third fastest decline in people working from home between 2021 and 2022 (-26.8 percent) and the Albany-Schenectady-Troy MSA had the sixth (-17.5 percent). At 14.7 percent, the Albany metro had the state’s fourth most concentrated WFH workforce, trailing New York (16.4 percent), Ithaca (16.8 percent) and Kingston (18.4 percent).

Nearly two-thirds (65.9 percent) of the metro area’s WFH workforce were located in Albany and Saratoga Counties. Among the region’s five largest counties, the WFH workforce declined the fastest in Warren (-38.0 percent) and Albany (25.0 percent) Counties. 

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