Workers in remotable jobs spend an extra hour alone daily and show higher psychological distress, with effects twice as large for those living alone. Implications for RTO policies and corporate costs.
A new study from economists Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington, and Amanda Pallais puts a number on a trade-off that corporate return-to-office debates have long circled: remote work increases isolation, and isolation raises psychological distress. Workers in remotable jobs spend about one additional hour alone per workday after the pandemic, relative to those in non-remotable roles. They also increased days spent entirely alone and cut after-work socializing. The isolation jump was sharpest for those living alone. Their probability of spending the entire day without social contact rose 7 percentage points (83%).
Mental distress tracked with the isolation shift. Scores on the Kessler (K-6) scale – a standard measure of generalized psychological distress – rose by 0.1 standard deviations for workers in remotable jobs compared with non-remotable peers. The increase was roughly twice as large for those living alone versus those living with family. Alternative distress measures – frequency of depression, mental health care utilization, and antidepressant prescriptions – showed similar differential increases. Workers in remotable jobs did not differentially increase visits to non-mental health providers or prescriptions for non-mental health drugs like statins. That rules out the explanation that flexible scheduling simply made it easier to see a doctor.
The paper isolates a concrete behavioral change. Before the pandemic, workers in remotable and non-remotable jobs spent similar amounts of time alone. After the shift to remote work, the remotable group added roughly one hour of solo time per workday. That hour came from reduced commuting and less after-work socializing. For workers living alone, the effect was extreme: the share of days with zero social contact jumped from a low base to a level that is 83% higher than before. The mechanism is straightforward – remote work removes the incidental social interactions of an office, and people living alone have no household buffer.
The 0.1 standard deviation increase in K-6 scores is modest in individual terms but large when applied to millions of workers. For context, a 0.1 SD shift in a population-level distress measure is comparable to the effect of a moderate recession on mental health. The effect was concentrated among those living alone, where the distress increase was roughly double the average. The consistency across multiple metrics – depression frequency, mental health care utilization, and antidepressant prescriptions – strengthens the case that the distress is real, not a reporting artifact. The absence of a similar increase in non-mental health visits or prescriptions (statins, for example) confirms that the change is specific to mental health, not a general increase in healthcare access.
For companies with large remote or hybrid workforces, the study adds a direct line item to the cost-benefit analysis of remote work. Higher psychological distress translates into higher healthcare claims, especially for mental health services. Employers that self-insure or bear a large share of health insurance costs will see the impact on their P&L. The effect is most concentrated among employees living alone – a group that is also harder to retain in an isolated environment. Retention risk rises when workers feel socially disconnected, and the cost of replacing a skilled employee often runs six to nine months of salary. Companies that ignore this asymmetry are taking on underappreciated balance sheet risk.
The most immediate market implication is the direction of return-to-office (RTO) policy. If large employers start citing this study or similar research as a rationale for stricter in-office requirements, it could accelerate a trend already visible in sectors like finance and tech. Office landlords would benefit from higher occupancy and longer lease demand. Coworking and office-service providers would see increased foot traffic. Remote-first companies – pure-play tools or fully distributed firms – would face a narrative headwind: if the data shows that isolation harms workers, the burden of proof shifts to those who defend permanent remote work.
The paper does not prove that remote work universally damages mental health. It does show a statistically significant average effect that is larger for the subgroup most vulnerable to isolation. Any corporate policy that ignores this asymmetry is taking on underappreciated balance sheet risk. The next catalyst is the corporate response: which companies cite this evidence, and how quickly do they adjust their workplace policies?
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