We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 18112
September 2025
Social Substitution? Time Use Responses to Increased Workplace Isolation

This paper examines how people adjust their time use when experiencing more time alone, a growing share of adults’ lives. We exploit the dramatic rise in remote work following the onset of the pandemic, which sharply reduced time spent with non-household members during the workday, to study whether individuals substitute toward more in-person interactions outside of work. On days individuals work from home, they spend 3.5 more hours in activities spent entirely alone and over 5 fewer hours in activities that include any non-household members. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compare pre- and post-pandemic changes in time use for workers in teleworkable versus non-teleworkable occupations to ask what happens to time allocations when workers are induced toward remote work. Averaging over all days, teleworkable workers spend 32 more minutes in activities spent entirely alone and 38 fewer minutes in activities that include any non-household members. Normalizing by their 46-minute increase in remote work, these effects are of a similar magnitude to our descriptive estimates. We find almost no substitution toward spending more time with others outside the household to offset lost in-person interactions at work.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)