Working From Bed Is More Common Than You Think, Says New Survey

If you already had a home office before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a large portion of the workforce to work from home, odds are that you’ve been making great use of it. Or maybe you had some other spare room that you converted into an office.

According to a survey conducted by contractor leads service CraftJack in June 2021, this is the case for nearly one-third of all 1520 American remote workers who participated in the survey: 32 percent said they most often work from a home office. For another 31 percent, however, the bedroom is their go-to workspace.

It’s likely that a number of those participants have carved out a corner of their bedroom for a desk. But the survey also reveals just how common it has become for people to conduct business right from bed: 65 percent admitted to working from bed on occasion, and 38 percent said they regularly do so.

Some professions appear to lend themselves to WFB (work from bed) more than others. An impressive 80 percent of survey participants who work in real estate have worked from bed before; and it’s a popular spot for people in engineering, accounting, healthcare, and IT, too. On the other side of the coin are employees in insurance, legal, human resources and recruiting, media and journalism, and education. Only 42 percent of respondents in insurance, for example, confessed to working from bed. That said, there’s a pretty good chance they’ve at least worked from the couch—68 percent of all participants said they have, and 45 percent have made a habit of it.

Overall, the survey suggests that many Americans are still trying to adapt to remote work; 71 percent of those surveyed said they’re “improvising” a workspace. But that’s not to say the lack of permanence is always a bad thing—plenty of employees may appreciate the newfound freedom to migrate from room to room (or even outside) whenever they want a change of scenery.

You can find out what other WFH trends CraftJack uncovered in the survey here.