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.
This for real. Wish commutes weren’t so god damn awful and long that in office jobs weren’t so soul sucking. Or god forbid we get compensated for our commutes or having to live closer to offices and pay exorbitant rents/taxes.
Like okay, your office is downtown in a major city. It costs $3k or some dumb shit for a studio apartment but the job only pays $80k a year and of course no overtime. So either I have to live an hour out and take a slow ass dirty train or drive in (and pay for parking too?!), or you let me work from home and I save two hours of my life per day. You as a corporation should be lobbying politically for more housing to bring down prices and providing a housing allowance or something if you want me coming in. “Nobody wants to work anymore!!” Like dude pay my rent and I’ll be in the office every day.
I think it would do me some good to have some in-person interaction, but I refuse to take a job where it’s forced upon me because it’s just too expensive to the point where even if the salary is $50k higher I don’t think I would go back to an office even on a hybrid/part-time basis. Work from home is the practical solution to this problem, because the other solutions are too radical for corporate America to try on a wider scale.
I totally think that workplaces should be required to pay for commute time. I’m curious if it’s been tried somewhere else before. It’s a long-shot at this point in time, but that doesn’t make it any less worth advocating for.