A personal network analysis of remote workers

The rise of remote work has introduced new dynamics into the labor market, reshaping both where and how people work. While research on social networks has long emphasized the importance of personal contacts in job searches and status attainment, the rapid diffusion of remote work opens new and largely unexplored avenues of inquiry. Drawing on egocentric network data from 4010 workers and 22,052 professional and household ties, we examine how three distinct work arrangements—fully remote, hybrid, and on-site—are associated with the composition of personal networks, the exchange of social support, and the emergence of workplace and household conflict. Using multivariate and multilevel techniques to test a set of hypotheses, we find that although remote workers maintain professional networks that are geographically more extended, they do not report lower emotional proximity to colleagues compared to on-site workers. Overall, we observe no substantial differences in the transmission of social support across remote work modalities. In contrast, marked differences emerge with regard to conflictual relationships. Hybrid workers report higher levels of household conflict. Higher conflict within personal networks is also reported by fully remote managers and by workers who perceive a mismatch between their preferred and actual level of telework. This article provides novel empirical evidence on a growing and powerful driver of personal network dynamics in today’s labor market.