Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 5 million people in the US, or 2.4% of all Americans, are estimated to have moved to a new location as a result of remote work’s location flexibility.

“For the first time, remote work allowed many people across the country to see a life in which the location of their job and where they live did not have to be one and the same,” Upwork chief economist Adam Ozimek wrote in a statement.

Before the pandemic, more than 80% of workers lived within an hour-and-a-half commute of their workplace. Now, more than one in four respondents who reported moving in the Upwork survey said home is now more than four hours away from work.

Citing the work of economists Arjun Ramani and Nicholas Bloom, who refer to suburban home price gains from urban migration as the “donut effect,” Ozimek says, “the donut can be huge.”

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