Best States to Work from Home? CT Ranks 24th

In a new analysis ranking the best states to work from home, Connecticut was middle-of-the-pack, placing 24th among the states. 

To identify which states are most conducive to working from home, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 12 key metrics. The data set ranges from the share of workers working from home before COVID-19 to internet cost and cybersecurity. The financial website also considered factors like how large and how crowded homes are in the state.

Together, these metrics show how feasible working from home is in terms of cost, comfort and safety. Prior to this pandemic, just 25 percent of all workers in the U.S. had worked from home, and only 29 percent were able to do so, the website noted, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Connecticut ranked 13th in the group of work environment categories, but 39th in the living environment categories, largely driven by low rankings in metrics such as cybersecurity (43rd), average retail price of electricity (47th) and access to low-priced internet plan (33rd).

The analysis found that overall the best states for working from home are Delaware, Washington, New Hampshire, Colorado, Georgia, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, North Carolina and South Dakota.  At the bottom of the list:  Arkansas, Mississippi, Hawaii and Alaska.

Among the categories considered, there were some stand-outs for Connecticut.  Connecticut ranked first among the states, with the highest share of households with access to broadband speeds over 25 Mbps, 98.70 percent, which is 1.5 times higher than in Mississippi, the state with the lowest at 65.40 percent.  Connecticut also ranked 19th in the share of workers working from home pre-COVID-19, at 5.1 percent. 

“People who are working from home for the first time should treat it the same way as they would going to their place of work normally. They should continue to follow their daily work routine, just without the commute,” said Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst. “It’s important for workers to be punctual and minimize the amount of distractions around them from things in their house that wouldn’t be at work, such as a TV. However, workers could consider getting a little extra sleep or having a better breakfast in the time they normally would have spent commuting.”

Other categories boosting Connecticut were less about the work and more about the home.  For example, the state ranked 8th in the share of for sale homes with a swimming pool, 13th in average home square footage and 18th in the median square footage per average number of persons in a household.