Covid accelerated the trend of work from home in America. In the name of safety, the percentage of employees working from home jumped to 18%. It was a status thing, not just a covid safety measure. Not everyone enjoyed the flexibility. The interest group hurting now due to this change is a powerful lobbying group, especially in cities, and they are suffering: commercial real estate. This is and will continue to be a fight.
Technology in both employee capabilities and employer surveillance allows for both sides to agree on work from home arrangements. Everyone in that relationship is happier. No productivity loss, some productivity gains, no commutes and happier employees make for a better employment experience. Employers can cut back on overhead by altering the space they rent or eliminating it entirely. Commercial real estate suffers. Vacancies have steadily increased since the pandemic. What has followed is financial strain or bankruptcies for CRE.
They know a crash is in the foggy future. The defaults have begun. Big names are holding garbage and defaulting now, even before a full on recession. As the pandemic has become endemic and most people have changed mindset, return to work efforts have been sluggish. These large office buildings and towers are still only at 45-65% full depending on the city. Suburban office parks that cater to satellite office needs and smaller service firms are ghost towns. Keys are being turned in and pain is present and only going to get worse.
This is important because big players in the FIRE economy are being burned. The other factor is much of the recent renewal in urban areas has been catering to white collar office employers. These employers keep the daytime downtown full of customers for a myriad of hospitality jobs and urban retail. Those workers are not there anymore. Those small food and beverage employers are closing or already gone. Cities lose tax revenue up and down this chain.
This doesn’t even touch on the rising interest rate situation, which makes all the floating debt untenable. Landlords cannot get rate increases to cover for rising interest expenses and to make up for higher vacancies. They need the bodies in the offices.
The pain is widespread and the only beneficiaries are employers who can reduce overhead and employees who enjoy the flexibility. Up against major financial powers and nervous city governments, these happy employees do not stand a chance. There is no work from home advocacy group. There is no union.
Cities & financial firms are going to lean on employers to adopt hybrid models or outright force employees back into the office. Too much investment has been made in rehabilitating urban centers with the knock on residential and economic growth to throw it away for a small slice of employees. Taxing work from home employees can be a lever. Employers adjusting pay for remote employees can be another. The system will chisel at that 18% remote number to get office occupancy rates up to help big money.
While work from home is here to stay, the golden era is likely gone. Additional surveillance layered in the last few years has changed the relationship. Governments and major lobbying groups are hurting. They are organized. Sitting in their pajamas, Jane and Michael type away in their makeshift home offices unaware of the forces angry and moving in on them.
-By Henry Delacroix
Visit The American Sun at The American Sun
I don’t really agree with the OP essay that work-from-home is a good thing. Maybe I misread, but that seemed to be the author’s POV (unless I read it wrong).
Like, I have a friend from high school who lives nearby and got a job in IT where he had to commute into town to do his SQL and programming stuff.
He’d always been kind of a shut-in and video game playing nerd without a lot of friends except for me (E.G., I was one of two non-adult family members who showed up to his high school graduation party, and the last person, family or non, to leave). But, at least when he had to go into the city to work his job, he got to be around other people and flexed his social muscles a little.
These days: he literally lives in ze pod and works-from-home. I’ve tried to call and text him, but he doesn’t respond. A lot of it is, even if someone does want to “get out there” or whatever, its often very hard to re-integrate back into society. I would know, I spent most of my 20s as a basement dweller and am only now getting back out there again.
IMO, for whatever positives one can chalk up to working from home, its overall apart of a massively negative social trend wherein people are basically being trained to live in a VR / tech enslavement grid
No, work from home employees WILL quit before going back to a sterile pod-like corporate hell. This is a fact and I am seeing it in many friends and co-workers. I’d give 2 weeks notice myself if Big Corp said I had to go back to that shite. They won’t risk losing talent in this market with the replacement field as thin and uneducated as ‘the schools’ are turning out these days.
Work from home has been a good thing for me. I’m a late boomer in an industry full of millennials, and working from home I don’t have to deal with a lot of wokester oriented corporate culture crap like piped in cRap Music and associated other nonsense. I do my job customers like me and I don’t have to spend fuel or time on commute. If I had to go work back In an office environment I’d take early Social Security.
Taxi companies complained when Uber popped up, hotels when airb&b slithered in and buggy whip makers when the auto arrived. F the big city lobby. ( Oh and don’t forget, it used to be – don’t know what is now – that commercial prop’s couldn’t get ins if a 33% vacancy existed. )
Right wing southern brothers … it’s time to become permanently remote. Go rural – remote – prepped and grow your own. You need an internet skill and web businesses. Hop to!