Remote work continues to play a significant role as companies move past the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study found.
Nearly 30% of all work in January happened at home, according to WFH Research. That's six times the rate of remote work in pre-pandemic 2019.
The remote-work boom is the greatest change to the labor market since World War II, according to some economists, The Hill reported.
"It's affected so many things," Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist and WFH researcher said, according to The Hill.
"It's affected city structure. It's affecting days of the week that people play sport: golf, tennis. It's affecting retail. It's completely skewed, mostly in a positive way, the American economy."
The share of work done at home rose from 4.7% in January 2019 to 61% in May 2020.
Employers then gradually summoned American workers back to the office in 2021 and 2022.
The work-from-home population stabilized around 30% last spring.
While workers generally love working from home — it saves an average of 70 minutes of daily commuting time — employers have learned to accept it. It helps that almost half of that saved commuting time is used for work.
"There's sufficient and growing evidence that people do work well when they're working from home," said Barbara Larson, executive professor of management at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business. "It's not like everybody was working hard when they were in the office."
Not every worker can work remotely though. That includes the restaurant and retail sectors, factory and warehouse workers, bartenders and farmers.
"Fifty-five percent of Americans can't work from home," Bloom said, The Hill reported. "They all would like to work from home. They can't."
Roughly 13% of the workforce works entirely from home. Those people include many IT and payroll workers, contractors and customer-service workers.
About 30% of U.S. employees form a "hybrid" workforce.
"About one-third of Americans can work hybrid," Bloom said, The Hill reported. "Managers, professionals. My students [future Stanford graduates], they're all going into hybrid jobs."
Many hybrid workers are producing three days in the office and two at home. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are popular choices for in-office work.
However, not everyone wants to avoid the office. Although two-fifths of workers aged 50 and above prefer full-time remote work, three-quarters of 20-somethings want to work in the office.
Last month, for the first time since the pandemic began, the occupancy rate in urban office buildings reached 50% in the 10 largest cities, The Hill reported.
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