The Daily Populous Tuesday June 11st, 2024 evening edition
Authored by cnbc.com and submitted by -43andharsh

The work-from-home trend is here to stay. Many companies have continued to let employees work remotely for at least some of the workweek — four years on from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic — due to the win-win nature of the arrangement: Remote work is more profitable for companies and highly valued by employees, according to labor economists. While some companies have issued return-to-office mandates, they're the exception. The five-day, in-office workweek is antiquated for a large share of workers, a relic of the pre-pandemic job market. "Remote work is not going away," said Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies workplace management practices. "In fact, if you look five years out, I think it will be higher than it is now," he said.

One of the pandemic's 'most enduring legacies'

Working from home was relatively rare prior to 2020. At that time, less than 10% of paid workdays were from home, according to WFH Research. The share swelled to more than 60% as Covid-19 lockdowns pushed people indoors, then gradually decreased as employers called workers back to the office, mostly just a few days a week in so-called hybrid arrangements. More from Personal Finance:

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Why the minimum wage doesn't budge despite inflation However, the number of days worked from home isn't declining anymore; it has held steady since early 2023 at about 25%, more than triple the pre-Covid rate. The rise of remote work "is probably going to be one of the most enduring legacies" of the pandemic-era U.S. labor market, said Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research at job site Indeed. The days of full-time in-office work "are gone," he said.

Of course, about half of all jobs — like those in service, accommodation and retail — can't be done from home at all, Bloom said. Of those that can be worked from home — such as many finance and technology jobs, for example — about 41% are hybrid and 20% are fully remote. Remote work is "highly profitable" for companies, which is primarily why the trend has stuck, Bloom said. The big upside is it reduces employee turnover rate by about a third. That's because workers value remote work, so they tend to quit less often, Bloom said.

Remote work is not going away. Nick Bloom economics professor at Stanford University

His research suggests workers value hybrid work about the same as an 8% raise. A return-to-office mandate would require a commensurate pay increase to avoid attrition, he said. Companies don't have to spend as much on hiring, recruitment and training if they lose staff less frequently, he said. One company told Bloom that it costs the firm about $20,000 each time a worker quits. Employers can also cut costs via the need for less office space and can broaden their recruitment pool to all geographic areas of the U.S. — potentially to areas where the cost of living is lower and they may be able to pay lower relative wages, Bunker said.

'Firms care about profits, not productivity'

In addition, hybrid work doesn't appear to have any negative impact on workers' productivity, Bloom said. Ultimately, "firms care about profits, not productivity," Bloom said. "What makes money in a capitalist economy tends to stick." About 8% of all online job postings in the U.S. advertised the role as remote or hybrid, according to Indeed data as of May 2024. While down from a pandemic-era peak of around 10% in early 2022, it's still "far above" the roughly 2% to 2.5% before the pandemic, Bunker said.

That recent decline is partly attributable to a pullback in job ads among some struggling sectors such as software development that tend to advertise remote roles rather than a broad-based throttling back of remote-work opportunities by employers, Bunker said. When people have the chance to work flexibly, 87% of them take the opportunity, according to a 2022 survey by the consulting firm McKinsey. "Job seekers really want it," and employers feel they need to offer the benefit to stay competitive, Bunker said.

Why some companies are forcing a return to office

Of course, not all firms allow employees to work from home: About 38% of employees who can do their jobs from home are required to work full-time in the office, according to WFH Research data as of May 2024. Such employees tended to be older or work at older companies that were started decades ago, it found. Many companies point to downsides to remote work, including a reduced ability to observe and monitor employees and reduced peer mentoring, cited by 45% and 42% of employers, respectively, according to a 2023 ZipRecruiter survey. However, a January study from the University of Pittsburgh found that large U.S. companies imposing return-to-office mandates did so in order to "scapegoat" remote work for poor company performance — not because working full-time in the office boosted the firm's values. The study found "significant declines" in worker job satisfaction without a big change in financial performance or firm values.

MaroonedOctopus on June 11st, 2024 at 12:57 UTC »

~75% of the department doesn't live within a 1-hour drive of the office. If they wanted to make us go in with any regularity and no transportation expenses reimbursed, it would take a multi-year effort to stop hiring remote workers, provide incentives for people to move closer, and eventually after 5-10 years the number of people living too far might be low enough where they could actually consider it.

It's especially challenging to hire locally considering it's a super niche job industry and there isn't a company nearby from which they could poach employees.

But for now and the next 5 years, the department is pretty much permanently fully remote.

PlasticFounder on June 11st, 2024 at 09:38 UTC »

5 years 100% wfh here. I ain’t coming back for nothing.

Atomic_ad on June 11st, 2024 at 08:08 UTC »

Look at me over here, being unlikely.