About one-third of all workers in the world could be permanent telecommuters by the end of the year as technology and a year of experience through the pandemic make remote working a more viable option for businesses and employees alike, the Boston-based, libertarian Pioneer Institute said in a new report outlining the ways in which the “barriers to exit” have been lowered by the pandemic and technology. 

“The pandemic has changed the calculus on whether telecommuting is worth it, for both employers and workers,” Andrew Mikula, who authored the report, said. 

About 72 percent of the global workforce was working remotely as of October, the report said, and the World Economic Forum estimated that as much as 34.4 percent of the workforce will remain remote at the end of 2021. 

Pioneer noted that the Harvard Business School’s estimate was far lower – 16 percent of the workforce telecommuting after the pandemic – but still much higher than the 3.6 percent of workers who went to the office remotely before the pandemic. 

“Before the pandemic, economic growth was increasingly concentrated in a small handful of powerful, expensive cities, and access to the innovation economy and labor market often kept workers from moving to cheaper, roomier locales,” the report said. “But after the pandemic hit places like New York City especially hard, stories abounded of wealthy people decamping to vacation homes in Vermont, Florida, or the Hamptons. It’s an open question whether such people will need policy-driven incentives to move back, especially given New York’s heavy reliance on the wealthy to fill city coffers.” 

Pioneer Institute previously highlighted what an exodus of workers and high-income residents could mean for Massachusetts, focusing criticism on efforts to raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest.