The US economy is losing billions as stubborn workers continue to refuse to go back to their jobs, with more than 30 percent of work done remotely last month.
Work from home resistance plagues major American cities, with New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. losing more than $4,000 per worker each year to the habit.
When the pandemic hit in May 2020, more than 61 percent of people were working from home — a number that has only halved despite the nation’s attempts to get back on its feet.
The work-from-home rate was just 4.7 percent before the pandemic, a stark difference that has experts worried about the continuing impact across many industries.
The US economy is losing billions every year as home business continues to plague major US cities
Related data, sorted by WFH Researchfound that the level of working from home after the pandemic is still six times higher than before.
And that level rises to nearly 50 percent of all employees insisting on working remotely in large metropolitan areas, such as New York and Washington, DC.
The problem is wreaking havoc on businesses across America, with major cities from Miami to San Francisco taking a huge economic hit from people staying home.
With industries still suffering and rampant inflation plaguing nearly all Americans, the failure to return to the office has economists worried.
“It affected a lot of things,” said Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist and researcher at WFH. hill.
The architecture of the city has been affected. They affect the days of the week that people do sports: golf, tennis. It affects retail.
The researcher stressed that remote work creates a huge financial gap, as former industry centers failed to return to their former glory.
New York city coffers, Bloom said, “will see about $12 billion less in expenditures in Midtown Manhattan,” the center of the city’s financial sector.
In the wake of a work-from-home pandemic that saw the majority of employees forced to avoid work, the next two years saw a gradual push from companies to bring life back to the office.
But many seem to have remained stubborn, and in the first month of 2023, one in three people were constantly avoiding work for the comfort of their home.
The city leading the way in work-from-home for employees is Washington, D.C., where WFH research found that the nation’s capital saw a 37 percent decrease in personal days worked in the office.
It was followed by Atlanta, Georgia, at 34.9 percent, Phoenix and Arizona, at 34.1 percent, and Los Angeles, at 32.9 percent.
More than 30 percent of workers refuse to return to their usual work routine, a dynamic that has economists concerned about the impact on the country’s ailing economy.
28.2 percent of people are hybrid workers, which means they only enter the office two days a week
Some people insist that working from home is not necessarily a negative, emphasizing that more work can be done without the hassle of commuting.
“There is sufficient and growing evidence that people do well when they work from home,” said Barbara Larson, executive professor of management at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business.
“It’s not like everyone worked so hard when they were in the office.”
But while stumbling over while staying home may be a productive way to work, it is the American economy that is paying the price.
With large numbers of people avoiding city commuting and the extra spending that comes with it, major US centers are losing thousands per worker.
New York tops the list of places that take a hit from working from home, with no more than $4,600 spent per person, each year.
Just over 4 million people currently work in the private sector in New York, according to state labor statistics, which equates to a loss of more than $18.7 billion — every year.
Willy New York Los Angeles at $4,200 per worker, Washington, D.C. at $4,051, and Atlanta, Georgia at $3,938 per worker.
Telecommuting “means less spending for consumers, it means less transportation,” Adam Ozemek, chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group, told The Hill.
A large number of employees also find themselves in a “hybrid” work situation, arriving at the office only a few days out of the week.
WFH Research data released in January found that 28.2 percent of people are hybrid workers, a new dynamic that has also affected traditional office life.
Only urban office buildings in the 10 largest cities reached an occupancy rate of 50 percent last month, and offices for the first time reached half that, according to Castel.
In New York, 48.6 percent of offices in the metro area remain empty, while Chicago is 50.7 percent vacant and Houston 61 percent.
Thus, rented office space is destroying business profits across major cities, as many are stuck paying for buildings that are barely half full.
“It’s not the end of the cities,” Ozemek said. “But if cities are not flexible and smart about how they change their fiscal and tax policies, you could end up in a bad spot.”
