A new peer reviewed study in Science from a Federal Reserve economist finds the trade off is real, but the data do not justify forcing a return to the office.
Remote-capable American workers are 72% more likely than their peers in hands-on jobs to spend an entire workday with no human contact, according to a new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science. For workers who live alone, that figure climbs to 83%.
The analysis, led by Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Natalia Emanuel, draws on five large national surveys of U.S. workers to compare "remotable" jobs (software engineering, marketing, analysis) with "non-remotable" jobs (surgery, mechanical work, dental hygiene) as a natural experiment. Workers in remotable roles also spent 58% more hours alone, self-reported worse mental health, and visited mental health care providers more often.
The asymmetry between people who live alone and people who live with family is the sharpest finding. Mental distress rose almost twice as much for solo dwellers as for those sharing a home, Emanuel told NPR this week.
Nicholas Epley, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who was not involved in the study, told NPR that Americans routinely underestimate how much social connection they actually need, and he linked chronic isolation to immune and cardiovascular strain. Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist at the University of Sussex who studies human connection, added that belonging is a basic psychological need, and the data are consistent with that framing.
The study has hard limits. The design is observational and quasi-experimental, not a randomized trial, and the remotable-versus-non-remotable classification is itself a modeling choice. The authors and Epley both caution that the data do not justify forcing every office worker back to a desk. Other research, also cited in NPR's coverage, finds measurable productivity gains from remote work, and Emanuel's earlier work shows workers would give up 4 to 10% of pay to keep the option.
The trade-off is real and uneven, not a verdict. The same study surfaces a useful signal: remote workers did not offset lost daytime contact with more after-hours socializing. The hours that vanished from the office did not reappear at the bar.
That points to a small set of design moves the data itself supports. One chosen in-person anchor a week. A recurring phone call rather than a chat thread. A co-work block in a shared space. A deliberate lunch away from the desk. The point is not to recreate the office but to recreate the contact, and for someone who lives alone, the margin for error is thinner. The cost of skipping that anchor is the figure the study actually measured: an 83% higher chance of a day spent with no one at all.