In recent years, the number of people in Fairfield County who work from home has doubled in some areas.
The demographics of every town and city in the state are displayed in the Connecticut town profiles, which have been published yearly for the past ten years. The profiles are the result of a collaboration between AdvanceCT and the CT Data Collaborative.
The rise in families working from home was one of the figures that caught Michelle Riordan-Nold’s attention as executive director of CT Data Collaborative.
According to the latest profiles, 39% of people in Weston work from home. 15% of the town’s workforce worked remotely in 2019.
Remote employment has skyrocketed in Westport, where 36% of inhabitants now work from home, up from 15% in 2019. According to Riordan-Nold, there are also a lot of remote workers in Stamford, New Haven, Fairfield, Greenwich, West Hartford, and Norwalk.
Many inhabitants of Fairfield County switched to working remotely after formerly commuting into New York City.
They work in the insurance and finance sectors, so after the pandemic struck, those sectors discovered that you could work from home and still accomplish the same tasks, according to Riordan-Nold.
The local businesses of Weston and Westport also benefited from an increase in distant workers.
Eleven enterprises debuted in Weston between 2021 and 2024. According to CT Data Collaborative, just four businesses opened in the municipality between 2016 and 2019.
Similar growth was observed in Westport, where 59 new enterprises opened between 2021 and 2024 as opposed to 30 between 2016 and 2019.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s five-year American Community Survey provides the data for the profiles.
“The survey is conducted annually among approximately 20,000 residents in Connecticut, so when you’re looking at town-level data, you want to look at the five-year,” Riordan-Nold said. You want to look at a bigger data set when you split it down to 169 towns.
Additional information is obtained from the state Office of Policy and Management, the state Department of Education, and the state Department of Labor.
In order to give residents a better understanding of their areas, the study also includes statistics on median income, rent, and house value.
According to Riordan-Nold, it’s simply a quick and simple method for people to obtain a few facts or a more comprehensive, high-level understanding of places. What are the towns’ economic composition, who resides there, and how successful is their educational system? In actuality, it serves as a concise overview of our 169 distinct towns.
According to Rachel Gretencord, vice president of AdvanceCT, the profiles were first created to assist local governments in their attempts to draw in firms. Before determining where to relocate, the profiles assist businesses in understanding the town’s demographics.
According to Gretencord, “housing is included because the companies we work to recruit often ask about it.” Companies want to make sure that housing choices for executives and employees are accessible within a reasonable distance of the site they are considering, as housing availability is crucial to their ability to recruit and retain employees.
