The Daily Money: Americans are willing to take a pay cut to work from home

Happy Monday, TDM readers! This is Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy bringing you today’s headlines.

How much of a pay cut would an American employee take for the privilege of working from home?

The answer: A prospective employee will give up about 8% in annual pay for a job that is partly or fully remote, according to Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who is a leading voice in remote-work research.

That works out to about $4,600 a year, based on a median U.S. salary of $57,200 for full-time workers.

That makes sense, given that remote workers spend about $6,000 less per year than office-bound employees, according to FlexJobs, a remote-work site that has run surveys on the value of telework. Workers reap those savings by preparing their own meals, walking their own dogs and making fewer trips to the dry cleaner.

And yet, saving money is not the top reason Americans favor remote work.

It’s the commute. Working from home saves employees about an hour a day, on average, Bloom said.

“There’s a saying,” Bloom said. “Leisure is a lot more valuable at home than it is at work.”

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