One of the questions coming out of the pandemic, when the majority of employees were working remotely, was how long it would be before that began to change.
Apparently, it’s changing now.
The results of two Census Bureau studies show that fewer than 26% of households in the U.S. have someone working from home. That’s down from early 2021, when that statistic was 37%. Bloomberg is reporting that only seven states – plus Washington D.C. – have remote-worker rates above 33%.
That’s a dramatic drop from mid-pandemic statistics, when 31 states, plus D.C., had a remote work rate that high.
The reversal comes as many employers push to get staff to return to offices. Remote employees have been blamed for dwindling profits and costing cities billions, and fears of a recession have eroded their ability to demand the telework perks they won early in the pandemic, when the labor market sat squarely in their favor, Bloomberg reported. Some companies — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is one — expect a return to five days in the office.
Data from the surveys shows all 50 states have seen work-from-home rates drop from their pandemic peak. But there doesn’t appeare to be an explanation, and could have multiple causes: migration, socio-economic, gender and race factors, and possibly even politics.
According to Bloomberg, New York City workers left during the pandemic to cities such as Greenwich, Conn., driving a boom in home sales and remote-work rates. Now, they may not be moving back, opting to commute.
“People exited New York City, they’re not selling their homes to go back,” Bill Raveis, founder of Connecticut-based William Raveis Real Estate Inc., told Bloomberg. “They’re staying here and they’re making their adjustments to the community.”
The latest Census data also shows that employees’ demand for remote jobs is outpacing the number of companies offering them. In 157 of the largest metro areas in the US, more than half of job applications were for fully remote or hybrid roles in August, according to LinkedIn data generated for Bloomberg, but postings for those jobs have been falling since early 2022, data from Indeed Inc. shows.
