Beverly Hills and Ann Arbor lead Michigan in working from home, at more than double the state’s 13.5%

In Beverly Hills and Ann Arbor, more than 1 in 4 workers works from home

Imagine two laptops on one kitchen table. One partner is on a 9 a.m. call; the other is trying to answer email quietly beside the coffee maker. In Beverly Hills, 29.5% of workers report that they usually work from home, the highest share among 101 Michigan places with 10,000 or more residents. Ann Arbor is a close second at 28.7%, followed by Ferndale (28.1%), Royal Oak (27.4%) and Rochester (27.2%).

Across Michigan, the figure is 13.5%. That means the top two places have more than double the state’s share of remote workers. At the other end, Sault Ste. Marie (4.5%), Pontiac (4.8%) and Niles (5.1%) have the fewest, roughly one worker in twenty.

What the data shows: an Oakland County story, with college-town and lakeshore exceptions

Remote work in Michigan is concentrated, not evenly spread. Oakland County places take 15 of the 25 highest spots, including Birmingham (26.3%), Farmington (25.5%), Rochester Hills (23.6%), Oak Park (23.2%), Farmington Hills (22.8%), Novi (22.8%), Berkley (22.6%) and Troy (22.5%). At the county level, Oakland’s 20.2% trails only Washtenaw County’s 22.6%, the highest of Michigan’s 83 counties. For more on how these Oakland cities compare on other measures, see our Oakland County page.

Outside metro Detroit, the leaders are university and state-government towns: Ann Arbor, Okemos (23.6%), Haslett (22.2%) and East Lansing (21.0%). East Grand Rapids (26.0%) and Forest Hills (22.5%) represent West Michigan in the top 25, and Traverse City (19.4%) is the only northern Lower Peninsula city on the list.

Michigan’s largest cities sit near or below the state figure. Detroit is at 12.0%, Grand Rapids at 13.9% and Lansing at 14.8%. Of the 101 places, 40 are above 13.5% and 61 are below. The lowest shares, such as Muskegon (5.7%), Port Huron (5.7%), Ionia (5.9%) and Alpena (5.4%), belong to cities where about 19 of every 20 workers leave home for their jobs. This data does not say why; the ACS commuting table does not record occupation or industry.

Nationally, the share of people primarily working from home tripled from 5.7% in 2019 to 17.9% in 2021, according to the Census Bureau’s 1-year ACS. A separate measure, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, found that 33% of employed people did at least some work at home on days they worked in 2024. Our Michigan figures use a stricter definition: the place a person usually worked during a reference week.

Michigan places with the most and fewest home-based workers

Ten highest and ten lowest of 101 places, by percentage of workers 16 and older who usually worked from home.

Michigan overall: 13.5%.

Where these numbers come from

We used ACS 2024 5-year estimates (data collected 2020 through 2024) from table B08301, Means of Transportation to Work, retrieved through the Census Reporter API. The ACS asks workers 16 and older how they usually got to work in the previous week. “Worked from home” is one of the answer choices. We divided that count by all workers in each place and rounded to one decimal.

The ranking covers every Michigan city, village and Census-designated place with at least 10,000 residents, 101 in all. Place figures describe where workers live, not where their employers are located.

Cautions before drawing conclusions

• Hybrid workers are undercounted. The question asks how a person usually commuted last week. Someone home three days and in the office two may answer either way.
• The five-year window includes 2020 and 2021, when stay-at-home orders pushed remote work to unusual highs. Some places may have shifted back toward office work since then.
• Different surveys, different numbers. The Census and BLS figures above measure different things (primary work location versus any work at home) and are not directly comparable to each other or to our Michigan rankings.
• Small-place estimates carry wider margins of error. A one- or two-point gap between similar suburbs may not be meaningful.

What working from home can mean for couples’ time and boundaries

A remote job does not make a relationship better or worse on its own. It changes the shape of the day. Couples may gain time that used to vanish into a commute, more shared lunches, and more flexibility around school pickups. Many also find that the line between “work” and “home” gets fuzzy: the laptop stays open after dinner, the shared office becomes a negotiation, and one partner may become the default person for every delivery and sick day simply because they are the one at home.

For many couples, the helpful conversations are practical ones. Who gets the quiet room for calls? What time does the workday really end? Does being in the same house count as time together, or do you still need protected time that is just for the two of you? None of this signals a problem. It is the ordinary renegotiation that comes with a new routine.

When those conversations keep stalling, some people look for support. Remote workers often already have the tools that video therapy needs: a reliable connection, a private room and a calendar they control. Iryna Morhunova-Sutton, LLMFT, offers sessions only online, for individuals, couples and families located anywhere in Michigan. If you share your home office with a partner, it is worth planning where each of you will sit for an individual session so it stays private. Our guide to online therapy in Michigan explains how video sessions work, and our page on couples therapy describes what joint sessions usually focus on. If you are weighing options, how to find a couples therapist is a good next read.

Update schedule

We refresh this ranking with each new ACS 5-year release. As the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years leave the five-year window, Michigan’s remote-work shares may change noticeably. For more Michigan relationship data, visit our Michigan hub or the related report on households with children by city.