In some parts of Fairfield County the number of residents working from home doubled in recent years.
The Connecticut town profiles, released annually for the last decade, show the demographics for each town and city in the state. The profiles are produced as part of a partnership between the CT Data Collaborative and AdvanceCT.
One of the statistics that stood out to Michelle Riordan-Nold, executive director of CT Data Collaborative, was the increase in families who work from home.
In the most recent profiles, 39% of Weston’s population works from home. In 2019, 15% percent of the town worked remotely.
Westport also saw a drastic increase in remote work, with 36% of residents working from home, compared to 15% in 2019. Stamford, New Haven, Fairfield, Greenwich, West Hartford and Norwalk also have high rates of remote workers, Riordan-Nold said.
Many Fairfield County residents who previously commuted into New York City made the shift to remote work.
“They're in the financial industry, insurance industry, so it allows for once the pandemic hit, those industries realized you can work from home and still, you know, do the same work, get the job done,” Riordan-Nold said.
Increasing the number of remote workers also led to a boost in Weston and Westport’s local economies.
Between 2021 and 2024, 11 businesses opened in Weston. Between 2016 and 2019, only four businesses opened in the town, according to CT Data Collaborative.
Westport saw a similar increase, with 59 businesses opening between 2021 and 2024, compared to 30 from 2016-19.
Data for the profiles is taken from the five-year American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“When you're looking at town-level data, you want to look at the five-year because the survey is conducted annually of about 20,000 residents in Connecticut,” Riordan-Nold said. “When you break it down to 169 towns, you want to look at a larger data set.”
Other data is acquired from the state Departments of Education, Labor and the state Office of Policy and Management.
The report also includes numbers focusing on median home value, rent and income, with the goal of helping residents better understand their communities.
“It's just an easy way for people to grab a few statistics or get a better, high-level understanding of towns,” Riordan-Nold said. “Who lives in the towns, what's the economic makeup of the towns, the educational success. It's really just like a brief primer on our 169 unique municipalities.”
The original purpose of the profiles was to help municipalities in efforts to attract businesses, according to AdvanceCT Vice President Rachel Gretencord. The profiles help companies understand the makeup of the town before deciding where to move.
“Housing is included, as it is frequently asked about by the companies we work to recruit,” Gretencord said. “Housing availability is critical to companies’ ability to attract and retain workforce, and they want to make sure that housing options for both executives and workers are available within a reasonable distance of the site they’re considering.”
