Data study
The US Cities Where the Most People Work From Home (2025)
Nationally, 13.8% of workers are remote — down from the pandemic peak. But in a cluster of affluent, tech-adjacent suburbs, the rate is nearly triple that. Here’s the map of remote-work America.
Key takeaways
- 13.8% of US workers work from home nationally (ACS 2023) — the cities below run nearly 3× that.
- Santa Monica, CA leads at 38.4%; Frisco, Cary, Bellevue, and Arlington all clear 35%.
- The pattern is unmistakable: affluent, highly educated, tech-adjacent suburbs.
- Nationally, remote work is declining — from a 17.9% peak in 2021 — but remains more than double the 2019 level.
Remote work reshaped the American commute, but unevenly. Nationally, 13.8% of workers usually work from home (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2023) — down from the 2021 peak of 17.9%, but still more than double the pre-pandemic 5.7%. In a handful of cities, though, the rate is nearly triple the national figure. These are the leaders among cities with 40,000+ resident workers.
| City | Work from home | vs US (13.8%) |
|---|---|---|
| Santa Monica, CA | 38.4% | 2.8× |
| Frisco, TX | 37.8% | 2.7× |
| Cary, NC | 36.5% | 2.6× |
| Bellevue, WA | 35.6% | 2.6× |
| Arlington, VA | 35.3% | 2.6× |
| Kirkland, WA | 33.9% | 2.5× |
| Washington, DC | 33.0% | 2.4× |
The remote-work geography
The list reads like a map of the knowledge economy. Greater Seattle places Bellevue, Kirkland, and Seattle itself. The Bay Area adds Berkeley, San Ramon, and Fremont. The Washington, DC suburbs contribute Arlington and the District itself. And the Sun Belt tech hubs — Frisco near Dallas, Cary in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Johns Creek and Roswell outside Atlanta — round out the top 15. Where the work is laptop-based and the workforce is highly paid and highly educated, a third or more never commute at all.
What’s driving it
Three ingredients show up everywhere on this list: industry (software, finance, professional services, and other roles that travel over a network), income and education (remote-capable jobs skew toward higher-paid, college-educated workers), and suburban housing (room for a home office). None of these is an accident of the pandemic — the pandemic simply accelerated a shift these places were already positioned for.
What high remote-work rates mean for a city
When a third of Cary or Santa Monica works from home, the city’s daily rhythm changes: lighter rush-hour roads, quieter transit, a daytime population that stays put, and more demand on residential internet than on downtown offices. It’s also why these cities tend to pair high work-from-home rates with strong home broadband — a point we dig into in how to find the best internet for your city.
The national trend: remote work is cooling, not collapsing
It’s worth keeping the leaders in context. The national “usually work from home” rate has slipped each year since 2021 (17.9% → 15.2% → 13.8%) as return-to-office policies spread. But it remains more than double the 2019 rate of 5.7% — a structural shift, not a blip. The cities on this list are where that shift is most entrenched. We show each city’s work-from-home rate next to its commute and internet stats; browse any city in the directory or read how we source the figure on the data page.