Abstract

Thousands of people are being forced to work from home during the lockdown following the outbreak of the coronavirus emergency. An important element to assess the effects of the pandemic on employment is how many individuals can work from home. This paper proposes a methodology to identify the share of jobs that can be performed in a smart working mode in Italy, using data from the Sample Survey on Occupations (ICP), carried out by the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis (INAPP). We find that the share of individuals who can work from home is 32.6% in Italy, with some territorial heterogeneity due to economic specialisations, which penalises workers in the southern areas of the country. We also document considerable variation in the potential to work from home across industries and workers’ socioeconomic characteristics; women and native and mature workers, as well as workers in advanced services, are more likely to be employed in teleworking occupations. This paper also identifies workers in essential and non-essential industries that could work from home during the lockdown, limiting the risk of contracting Covid-19 while continuing to earn a salary.