Work From Home Is Here to Stay-Even if Some CEOs Don't Love It ~ #WSJ 📰

Work From Home Is Here to Stay-Even if Some CEOs Don't Love It
Big companies keep trumpeting return-to-office mandates, but the amount of time Americans work remotely is barely budging. #WSJ 📰

The past couple of years have seen a drumbeat of big companies announcing, to great fanfare, that they were requiring employees to spend more time in the office. Home Depot, Target, Microsoft, 3M, Intel-the list goes on and on.
But across the broader economy, the evidence suggests that the return to the office has stalled out.
An average of 26% of paid, full days were worked from home in May, according to a monthly work-from-home survey run by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom and Steven Davis. That is down, but not by much, from the 27% registered two years earlier.
It was about 30% in 2022, when companies were transitioning away from the pandemic. But in 2019, before the pandemic struck, Labor Department figures show that about 7% of days were worked from home.
"The data does seem at odds with the Jamie Dimon story of the world, where remote work is dead," said Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia who studies remote work.
Instead, remote-work rates appear to have reached a new equilibrium, with far more people working from home at least part of the time than before the pandemic.

Other data tell a similar story. Kastle Systems, a security company that tracks access-card swipes, puts average workplace occupancy across 10 major cities just slightly higher than a year ago.
Cellphone data collected by technology company Placer.ai found that average office visits per working day in May were about 32% below May 2019 levels. In the same month last year, they were about 35% below that 2019 level.
The disconnect between the high-profile return-to-office mandates from some large companies and the broader data could in part be because, big as they are, those companies account for just a portion of the 163-million-strong U.S. workforce.

Work from home is hardly over. In fact, it's probably here to stay.

• Read more: https://on.wsj.com/44jueEB

#WFH #RTO #RemoteWork

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16 replies (most recent on top)

@c9 whenever cry baby, you can stay home forever

@c1

Why would I pay for gas too like some worker. I'm not going into any office. Or paying for gas. Or parking.

Its kind of abuse. To make us drive, pay for gas or parking.

I work while shopping at Costco, at the gym, doing my side gig making woodworking items selling them on Etsy

I work while watching Netflix, while playing Candy Crush. While getting off.

I work while on vacation. I go to karate. I sleep. I go watch my kids soccer and take them to the movies.

I work on dates. In my pool.

And I work while at my other full time job.

This bought me a 2$ mil home, I have a cottage. A seadoo (sorry 2). I have a lot of investments. I have 2 high end cars.

Why would I give that up? LOL!

@bh

Fantastic advice but I'll pass.

You may be ok just working hard, no matter how you are treated. Many of us are not.

Either you can do something useful for once in your life and fetch me my severance package or you can learn to live with it. I've only provided two options, so even a dimwitted bootlicker like you can (semi) comprehend your options.

Have a fantastic day 😘

@bb

But be sure to retain all the no-value-added bootlickers like you, right?

@OP I could not get through the paywall. Does the article define which industries were included in the study?

@bj and beyond that, employees don't have to fight for parking and desks when they come into work.

"Oh here is a thought, why don't they have everyone that can work from home just be hired as contract laborers"

Most of the folks that can work from home are management so no OT would be paid anyway. However, if you actually look at Dell as an example, the employees chose to WFH and forego advancement opportunities. In other cases, employees took salary reductions to WFH. WFH saves the company and the employee money. However, AT&T wants to reduce the work force which is why AT&T C-Suite ignores all the evidence that WFH is actually better for companies and employees.

The other difference is that even at other companies where they made a grand pronouncement about workers returning to the office…there is none of the ankle bracelet, badge swipe, LAN monitoring extremes to monitor compliance as there is here. That is by no means “normal”. In fact it’s unheard of.

Oh here is a thought, why don't they have everyone that can work from home just be hired as contract laborers, they would save a lot of money and pay zero overtime and not have to pay for your medical or any benefits that you now get. SMH for sh-t sake go to work be glad you got a job.

@b4 they can save even more by getting rid of the cry babies

Very inconsistent policy within T.
Robert Walter’s org in Atlanta is allowed to work from home when there’s traffic due to a soccer game but other orgs, we’re told “no”.
Stankey could at least be consistent with his policy and exception making.

Smart companies and CEOs realize you can save a ton of money without obsolete and expensive office space and make your company more appealing to work for. Not sure why anyone’s surprised.

Not sure why this is a surprise. Many of us worked from home full time for decades before anyone ever said the word “covid”

That’s right. These executives need to wake up and get with modern times. If you want to get younger then you must adapt to what the younger generation wants and it’s not 5x RTO. They want WFH and flexibility

Starting just today, AT&T is shifting to full time at home. Wave 1 is being implemented at the very beginning of July,

Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Work From Home Is Here to Stay-Even if Some CEOs Don't Love It ~ #WSJ 📰

16 replies (most recent on top)

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