The Transition to Telework in Latin America and the Caribbean: Key Findings using LinkedIn data

The COVID-19 crisis generated a sudden need for businesses to start operating remotely, and for employees to work from home. In consequence, the use of telework increased rapidly in Latin America and the Caribbean as it did globally. However, differences on the severity of containment measures by country, access to internet, and particularities of each country's labor markets may have played a role in the divergence of trends across countries in the post-pandemic scenario. We use data from LinkedIn in 7 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, between January 2020 and April 2022, to shed some light on how telework evolved in a selection of countries in the region during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This note summarizes four findings associated with telework adoption and on the divergences in telework behavior across countries in the post-pandemic period. First, countries with more strict government containment measures experienced higher telework rates along 2020; second, telework adoption seems unrelated with countries' internet network coverage and internet network performance; third, telework adoption reflects the dynamics of the labor demand and was driven mostly by the professional services economic sector; and finally, it seems evident that telework will not return to its pre-pandemic levels and it is here to stay.