Do you love working from home in your pajamas? Or how about while munching on a pastry from a local coffee shop?
Naperville might just be the city for you.
The third largest city in Illinois was recently recognized for having one of the highest rates of remote workers in the country, according to a study by SmartAsset, a company that provides educational content for consumers to make better financial decisions.
SmartAsset ranked 357 of the largest U.S. cities based on the percentage of people working from home. The study used data from the 2023 and 2024 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
“The American Community Survey, or ACS, tracks remote work by asking respondents their primary means of commuting to work during the reference week,” SmartAssest spokesperson Toby Nelson said.
Anybody who selects “worked from home” during the reference week is classified as a remote worker by the survey.
“In other words, this is capturing usual work location, not occasional or hybrid days,” Nelson said. “So when we talk about remote work for the purposes of this study, it reflects where people work most often, if they say they’re working from home, so it could also capture people who are maybe working a majority of the week at home, but maybe one or two days in the office.”
Naperville ranked No. 12 on the list. In 2023, 27.88% of Naperville’s working population were classified by the American Community Survey as remote workers. In 2024, that number dipped slightly to 25.59%. The number of remote workers in Naperville in 2024 was 20,251.
Frisco, Texas, took the No. 1 spot on the list, with 33.69% of its working population in 2024 made up of remote workers.
Berkeley, California, came in at No. 2 with a remote work population of 31.49%. Cary, North Carolina, ranked No. 3 at 30.58%.
Naperville was the only city in Illinois to crack the top 25. The only other Illinois city that made the top 100 was Chicago, which came in at No. 73, Nelson said, with a remote work prevalence of about 18%.
“I do think, at a very high level, the similarities we are seeing is that many of the top cities on the list do have a high percentage of workers who are in those professional, technical and knowledge sectors and those industries we find, in general, tend to be most amenable to remote work,” he said.
That appears to be true for Naperville. While Nelson did not have raw numbers for the city, he did note that according to the Argonne National Laboratory Economic Development Capacity Index, both DuPage County and Will County have a high concentration of people who work in STEM and analytical roles, fields that tend to be more friendly for remote work.
Specifically, the Economic Devleopment Capacity Index noted that a higher concentration of the workforce in DuPage County is in STEM and analytical roles compared to 97% of all counties in the U.S. For Will County, that number was 87%.
“Naperville’s remote work share is elevated most likely because its local workforce is concentrated in professional, technical and knowledge sectors that tend to be more amenable to remote and hybrid work. And that’s typical of cities in the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.”
Nelson also noted that while the percentage of remote workers declined slightly in cities like Naperville, it is not necessarily a sign that remote work is going away any time soon.
“What we are seeing is that the return-to-office numbers are stabilizing right now,” he said. “I think in general, in areas with very high remote work prevalence like Naperville, this should probably be seen as a signal that flexible work is now a baseline expectation for that locality’s workforce.”
It is not the first time Naperville has been recognized for its remote work presence.
In 2024, LawnStarter named Naperville the 5th best city in the U.S. for remote workers in the U.S. To compile its ranking, LawnStarter evaluated 500 cities across the country on eight categories, including the number of remote job listings available, internet access, and quality and incentives for home workers. Naperville made the top five alongside Frisco, Sugar Land and Flower Mound in Texas and Carmel, Indiana.
In April 2020, Walter E. Smithe interior designer Alfred Beam did a composite design for a client’s master bedroom while working remotely at his home in Naperville. The pandemic forced a lot of people to work from home, and many continue to do so years later. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
The Naperville Development Partnership has also tracked remote work in Naperville. According to a study released last year on the Interstate 88 corridor in Naperville, nearly one in four Naperville residents work from home, suggesting that the city has become a “community of choice” for many remote workers.
Some Naperville businesses have also benefited from the rise in remote work.
When Sparrow Coffee opened in downtown Naperville in 2018, general manager Megan Gottig said about 10% to 15% of its clientele visited the cafe Monday through to get a cup of coffee and work at their laptop. Their proximity to North Central College boosted those early numbers, she said.
Now the overall number’s closer to 20% to 25%, and it’s not just students, she said. Many of the people who come to Sparrow to work are now become regulars, building relationships with the staff and bringing their families on the weekends.
“Monday through Thursday for sure, we see a lot of our seats filled up with people on their laptops and working on something,” Gottig said.
And for Sparrow, the increase in remote workers since the pandemic has benefitted the cafe, increasing sales by about 10%, she said. On top of that, Sparrow was recognized last year as one of the best coffee shops for remote work by financial media company, MarketBeat.com.
Naperville Public Library has seen a similar uptick in remote workers at all three of its branches, according to Trente Arens, director of marketing and communications.
“Many will use our study rooms for Zoom calls or can be found at their ‘usual’ table in the library several days a week,” Arens said. “We have also seen an increase in the number of people choosing to work from their own laptops and other devices rather than our public computers. We updated our Wi-Fi at all three locations last year to better accommodate this increase in demand.”
cstein@chicagotribune.com