Major U.S. corporations are successively demanding that employees return to the office, but the share of remote work in the United States has seen little change over the past two years. As levels remain far higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts say remote work is becoming a new standard in the U.S. labor market.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 15th that despite pressure from U.S. corporations to return to the office, the share of remote work has been virtually flat for the past two years. According to a monthly survey by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven Davis, in May, 26% of paid workdays by U.S. workers were done remotely. That was down only 1 percentage point from May 2024 (27%) two years earlier. It is lower than 30% in 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic was nearing its end, but still nearly four times higher than the 7% in 2019, before the pandemic. Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia, told the WSJ, "Claims that remote work is dead are quite different from the actual data."
Statistics from Kastle Systems, a security firm that tracks office utilization, show a similar trend. Office occupancy in major U.S. cities rose only slightly from last year. Office visits in May, compiled by location analytics firm Placer.ai, were still 32% below 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, U.S. corporations have been rolling out policies to increase in-office attendance. JPMorgan Chase made five days a week in the office mandatory starting in March last year, and The Home Depot, Inc., Target, Microsoft (MS), and Intel also announced plans to expand office work.
Experts say remote work is not a passing fad but has reached a new equilibrium. Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, said, "The younger the chief executive officer (CEO), the stronger the tendency to prefer hybrid work," adding, "As generational change occurs, remote work is likely to grow."
Some are also predicting the long-term spread of remote work. According to the WSJ, Bloom projected that as generational change proceeds, more corporations will accept remote work, as younger CEOs who were 40 or under during the pandemic are more accustomed to it than older executives.
Still, drawbacks of remote work are being noted. Harrington said that while remote work has helped expand employment for women with childcare responsibilities and people with disabilities, it can increase employees' isolation and mental stress and reduce learning and career development opportunities for new hires. Harrington pointed out that if experiences and skills that can be acquired naturally through in-person work are lacking, it could lead to lower productivity over the long term.