The number of Utah’s remote workers in 2024 remained more than double the pre-pandemic total, new research finds. And the Beehive State cracked the top 10 for its share of the workforce — 15.7% — still earning a living from home that year. The state placed 9th.

Heidi Prior, the author of the analysis out Wednesday, called remote work “a lasting modality.”

“I think many people might believe that everyone has just returned to the office now — that working from home is over — that that was a pandemic thing,” said Prior, a senior public policy analyst at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. “But the data shows that that really isn’t the case.”

Overall, the rate in Utah dipped down from a high of 20% working from home in 2021.

Those who ditched their commute for the long term tended to be white or Asian workers, higher earners, and have bachelor’s degrees or higher. And Prior pointed out the rate of U.S. citizens still working remotely in 2024 was twice the rate of noncitizens.

Those still at home are also concentrated in key sectors like the information industry — such as at tech and media companies — or in finance, insurance and real estate, or scientific jobs.

Not so for government workers. Their rate was less than 1 in 10. And it’s almost certain to have dipped since then. In 2025, Utah repealed a teleworking policy for state employees on days when the air quality was poor.

For her report, Prior analyzed data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which asked where participants had worked for the majority of the prior week. So while there’s no way to tease out how many people were fully remote and how many may have worked in a hybrid role, those in the work-from-home category had logged at least three out of five days without going to an office or other workplace.

Prior said she was surprised at the uneven picture the data painted.

“The interesting thing has been looking at the differences between the groups that stuck with working from home and those that went back to the office,” Prior said.

And one demographic group in the state experienced a big change after the height of the pandemic. Five years ago, 1 in 4 Utahns of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander backgrounds were working from home. Three years later, the rate dropped to 1 in 10 — a bigger decrease than any other racial or ethnic group experienced.

Utah County, the state’s second-largest county, claimed the highest work-from-home rate in 2024, at 17.7%. Davis County followed just behind, at 17.5%, followed by Salt Lake County at 16.3%.

Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous, hovered just above the statewide rate. In rural Iron County, by contrast, fewer than 1 in 10 residents had the luxury.

Just as before the pandemic, Prior noted women worked remotely at a higher rate than men.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.