The same percentage of employed people who worked remotely in 2023 is the same as the previous year, a survey found
Don’t call it work from home any more, just call it work. According to new data, what once seemed like a pandemic necessity has become the new norm for many Americans.
Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the results of its American time use survey, which asks Americans how much time they spend doing various activities, from work to leisure.
The most recent survey results, released at the end of June, show that the same percentage of employed people who did at least some remote work in 2023 is the same percentage as those who did remote work in 2022.
In other words, it’s the first stabilization in the data since before the pandemic, when only a small percentage of workers did remote work, and a sign that remote work is here to stay.
Great news for disabled people. Gives us a much better chance at finding a job willing to hire us!
I started a new position in my company in February 2020, just weeks before the lock down. Since then I’ve been almost entirely working from home, coming into the office maybe 10 days over the past 4 years.
During that time I’ve been promoted, gotten a separate pay raise to a new band, helped onboard the entire rest of my team (two of whom are completely remote).
I’ve done nothing but prove over and over again that I am excelling at my job remotely.
They are still pushing for me to come back to a “hybrid” 3 day a week schedule. Madness.
I think hybrid has its place. But it’s definitely not a one size fits all
There is work like construction, transportation, and customer service that can’t really be remote.
I’m not sure if there’s a good argument for work that can be done remotely to insist on both in person and remote work. It doubles the amount of workstation resources required, or compromises on at least one of them.
Maybe teams benefit from in-person communication? That’s probably simpler for some that haven’t found comparable online versions of whiteboarding tools or whatever. Good tools do exist, but feel people that haven’t adapted to them by now, it’ll take some real demand to make it happen. This might not be a characteristic of a highly effective team, though.
Most frequently, hybrid insistence seems do be more about justifying middle management, based on my highly unscientific observations.
Depends on what you define as work
I think people are very selfish, they only thick shit what they get from being in the office a few days, not what they could bring to everyone else.
You might not be a person who needs much social contact, but other people in your company is. And I think for a company to work you’ll need both people and you need to meet both half way.
Communication on teams meetings is extremely sub par. 90% just sit there on mute. They don’t speak because they’ll interrupt everything. There’s no dynamic.
A job is not a social club. You may need a mix of personality types, but if you lock yourself into a candidate pool from a tight geographic area, that’ll be far more constraining.
You can’t just make up a percentage based on anecdotal observation and expect anyone to take it seriously.
Generally, my online meetings work great. When there’s lag, or for low-priority or asynchronous points, we use the text channel. No interruption. That’s not really available in person. It also allows more input from thoughtful introverts, which typically get steamrolled and ignored in person.
They are still pushing for me to come back to a “hybrid” 3 day a week schedule. Madness.
3 days at office or 3-days work week?
Three days per work week “on average” - but with no details over what timeframe that average is calculated.
7-day work week for 3/7 of the year
And yet my company is forcing me back into the office, I’ve been resisting for over a year, and now they’re threatening hr->path to firing for insubordination if I don’t come in… I’ve been working remotely effectively since March 2020.
Started sending out applications to actual remote jobs, it just sucks, it was a good gig while it lasted.
How long have you been working remote vs in office? Would be a easy win for unemployment if you worked more remotely than you did in office so the change is contradictory to your role.
Good luck, remote job postings are a hellscape. I gave up and work “hybrid” which is I can occasionally take a wfh day but I’m expected in office 5 days a week.
Wait a moment…
“Work from home is here to stay, US data shows”
“Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O”
Fuck you. Here’s your upvote
Idiot #1 “How do you spell farm?”
Idiot #2 “E I E I O”
I’m curious how this impacts decentralization in terms of population density.
You could cure traffic congestion, repopulate rural communities with less conservative folk, and generally improve overall life satisfaction if more jobs became remote and access to high speed internet in rural communities became more common.
Would arguably reduce housing costs on average?
It already reduces housing costs for those who move away from high cost of living areas. Also, access to high speed internet is already common in rural areas of the USA. It wasn’t 10 years ago but we’ve made a lot of progress.
I’m glad to hear. Better satellite internet seems to make it more viable, too. I didn’t have high speed internet the entire time growing up while all my friends in town had it. This up through 2007.
Ideally you want the opposite. Sure not commuting to work saves a lot of emissions, but not driving in the first place is much better. Cities are far more energy efficient that spread out suburban housing.
I definitely do not want to live in a city, especially if I don’t have to go into an office. Living and working in the same closet-sized apartment would drive me insane.
We should fine companies who don’t do work from home when they could be. It’s safer for employees and better for the planet.
We’re basically subsidizing this behavior with low taxes. It ought to be unaffordable to waste money on offices they don’t need.
Hell, take some of the money out of the highway budget, since it results in less road wear and need for additional infrastructure.
Kinda like how my power company would send me CFL and LED light bulbs for free because reducing usage was cheaper and cleaner than building a new plant.
I think it’s really fucking sad that people get dressed in nice clothes every morning (with makeup for some), and commute 1-2 hours to eat a stale or costly lunch and maybe shit in a public toilet to 1) write Jira tickets, 2) sit on zoom meetings, or 3) white board some bullshit that will immediately become irrelevant in crunch time and then retreat home like zombies to repeat it all over again.
Have some dignity, work from home, unless your job actually requires physical presence (like nursing, teaching, mechanical etc.).
Edit if want to socialize, actually socialize instead of making it about work. Work is not socializing (for many), don’t force it.
You know what’s more sad? Tons of people die in traffic accidents on their way to work. It’s literally the most dangerous thing they do all day, and they do it for no reason.
Can confirm, that life sucked. My remote job is much, much better
From someone who willingly goes into the office almost every day, it’s still quite obvious that for the good of the world, the less people going in overall, the better. Better for the environment, disabled people, mental health, and I imagine better for housing markets (though I’m no economist).
WFH is supports the very policies that the government wants, less pollution less traffic more mental health. Unfortunately the business lobbies want us scurrying around like rats again because you know. Profits. Cats out of the bag now, no going back.
It’s not even about profits. If companies don’t have to pay for expensive office buildings they can save money. It’s all the middle management realising their jobs are are unnecessary.
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True for companies that aren’t locked into their pre-covid space. Some have decades-long leases, others own the buildings outright. My last place was able to walk away from a lease that they had just signed months before covid hit, and downsized to a space that just had some meeting rooms, a couple offices for execs, social space and server rooms. No need for a bunch of desks, they went 100% remote during lockdown and decided to stay that way permanently.
Working at home is so much better than having to go to the office. I am so glad more people get to continue this fantastic life style.
The next big damn that needs to break is a 4 day work week. There’s been more than enough studies showing it works. If a big company went to 4 days and a good remote (or even hybrid 2 in 2 out) they would be an absolute talent magnet and everyone else would be forced to follow suit.
Remote work has been great as I get nearly one working day a week back in commuting time and prep time. I’d gladly give some of that back to go hybrid for a 4 day hybrid schedule. Especially for work that is creative or intellectual focused, 40 hrs just has so much unproductive time. Hell I’m pretty sure we could find 8 hours a week in pointless meetings that could just be cancelled and replaced with emails to make this work.
It is? Then why can’t I find a single work from home job that isn’t a fake listing?
Found one real job this year without any problems. Maybe look worldwide? You’re not any longer bound to your city or your county when looking for 100% remote.
I had to shift this attitude myself when I started looking around this year. Was used to only look for jobs nearby to reduce commute… Bullshit. Opened up for worldwide (English is business language nearly everywhere) and now happily work remote 100%.
I wish you much success!
Good idea. Thanks for the tip.
BTW, which recruiting platform do you use? I’ve had zero luck on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Craigslist.
Onlyfans
If you’re looking for just WFH jobs, check out FlexJobs. There’s a membership fee, but because it’s oriented towards remote work and because the end users pay part of the cost, it filters out a lot of the bullshit jobs.
Man I was I was really excited for this one, given my shitty experience with job hunting in the past (as I’ve mentioned). So today I finally went to the website, filled out their survey… Got one job listing in my results, for a programming gig. Yes seriously, just one single shitty result. I don’t even know how to code. *sigh*
Thanks for trying but I should have known better than to get my hopes up. Guess I’ll just die.
- Find companies that support wfh
- Apply directly
- ???
- Profit?
But I’ve been driving up and down all the streets and can’t find any remote offices!
Try reading the article? They are pointing out that the percentage of people who did at least some work from home did not decrease between 2022 and 2023. This is not even full WFH. So what we see now is probably what it’s going to look like going forward.
I hate to be a dick, but if you’re struggling to find a job, and this is at all representative of your ability to do basic research, you have a glaring weakness that you can work on.
I literally have a company issued WFH laptop, from a company that now requires people to be in office again.
It’s not the jobs it’s the middle managers and real estate.
A big problem is the volume of fake listings.
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The big companies fighting it and also laying off hundreds of thousands of skilled workers are in for a wakeup call in the coming decade or two. Especially given that they’re more prime targets for cyber attacks.
Something something invisible hand.
It’s stable for now. My company has been getting people back into the office through several attempts. They haven’t given up, and they made sure to make that clear, just a work in progress.
The fuck it is lol - almost everyone I know, who works for a large corporation in a major metropolitan area is being forced back into a hybrid role. I went from completely wfh in March of 2020 to 4 days in office since the beginning of the year (NYC). I feel like there’s a sunk cost fallacy going on with the long 20-30 year leases a lot of these companies signed for in the 2010s
