The two companies are the latest in the US to sour on working from home, but does this mean the impending end of the trend as we know it?
Not according to Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and longtime researcher of working from home (WFH). For staff who can do at least part of their role from home, he says, the shift in working patterns is here to stay and is being reinforced by some big changes in the jobs landscape.
He argues the workplace has been redefined by the pandemic. Nearly half of all employees in the US are working from home for at least some of the working week.
Frontline workers, including those in retail, food services, cleaning, security or other jobs that are difficult to do remotely, are all working in person. But for the most part, everyone who can work from home is doing so at least some of the time.
This is a huge shift. In a paper released last month, Bloom and his co-authors found that before the pandemic, people were doing about 5% of their working days from home. Now, it's at least 25%.
"That is massive because it was doubling about every 15 years before the pandemic. So effectively, you have 40 years of growth in about two years," Bloom says.
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