Who Works from Home after First Declaration State of Emergency

The Japanese government has promoted the introduction of working from home, having implemented elementary, junior high, and high school closure and the declaration of a state of emergency to prevent the epidemic of COVID-19. This research examines who has worked from home since the first declaration of a state of emergency, and how the productivity of such people has been changed, using the JILPT survey. The main results are as follows. First, after the first declaration was lifted, workers with clear work evaluation criteria have been more likely to work from home. Second, workers with many meetings and with jobs centered on desk work, who have increased opportunities to use ICT-based video conferencing due to the state of emergency, have tended to work from home even after the first state of emergency was lifted. Third, we cannot observe that the membership-based system, which is the traditional employment system in Japan, hindered working from home. Fourth, workers with a bad surrounding environment for working from home (existence of family members living together and equipment of working from home such as the Internet) are less likely to work from home. Fifth, subtracting biases caused by unobservables, we expect that working from home does not affect monthly income, but has a negative effect on working hours over time.