Author: Riatu M. Qibthiyyah and Fauziah Zen

Executive Summary

During the COVID period, a form of remote working, work from home, is adopted in the workplace and/or is chosen by the workers. Based on SAKERNAS August 2020 survey, 10.39% of salaried workers worked from home during this early period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring on factors affecting the choice of remote working, we ?nd vulnerable populations, as in the case of women and disabled workers, have a higher probability of working remotely from home. However, married workers are correlated with a lower probability of working from home. Across sectors, manufacturing, transport, hotel and restaurant sectors are positively correlated with a higher probability of working remotely, and the reverse for the case of health and social and the government sector in general. In this early pandemic period, salaried workers who worked from home mostly experienced a lower or the same level of hours work compared to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic. There seems to be a divergence on the benefits of working from home, as from descriptive, an increase in earnings is dominated by workers with a relatively high wage rate.