New research from Wharton shows that technology firms pull a more diverse pool of job applicants when they offer remote work, a finding that could help shape how jobs are designed in the future.

In their paper, accepted for publication in Management Science, Wharton professors David Hsu and Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe analyzed thousands of technical and managerial jobs that were posted before, during, and after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. When the same jobs shifted from in-person to remote, that single change yielded a 15% increase in female applicants, a 33% increase in underrepresented minority applicants, and a 17% increase in total applicant experience.

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