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 is something that Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom, also known as the “Work From Home Guy” for his decades-long research on remote work, has been saying for years. “Since the beginning of 2023, we’ve been in the new normal,” Bloom said.
Bloom noted that research his team has conducted over the years mirrors what was found in the American time use survey. While the number of people working from home surged in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, peaking at around 60% during lockdown, people started returning to work in 2021. But then the number of people doing remote work started to stabilize.
Working from home is largely a benefit for those with a college degree. More than half of those who are 25 and older and have at least a bachelor’s degree could do some work at home, compared to 22% of those without a college degree, according to the survey.
For knowledge workers, the biggest barrier to working from home was convincing managers that workers can be just as productive at home as they are in the office.
Now, research is starting to show that working from home doesn’t affect productivity. In fact, it can help companies save money.
Last month, Bloom and a team of researchers published a study in which they measured the productivity of workers who did the same job, but one group worked from home two days of the week while the other group came into the office every work day.
Researchers ultimately found little difference in productivity between the two groups, but the workers who got to work from home seemed much happier with their work-life balance.
“Their quit rates fell by 35%,” Bloom said. “This is hugely profitable. Every person that quits there can cost them some $20,000 because they’ve got to go out and advertise the post, have multiple rounds of interviews, get the person in, train them and have them slow for the first six months. It’s really expensive.”
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Bloom said that hybrid seems to work for managers and workers as it balances out the positives and negatives of working from home. While working from home makes it harder to train and mentor people, and sometimes causes communication blips, people are overall happier when they have more flexibility.
While there are a few large companies that require employees to go into the office full-time, Bloom said that many companies have embraced the benefits of hybrid work and are allowing their employees that flexibility.
And now that companies have embraced hybrid work, he expects there can be even more room for flexibility, especially during months that can be slower for some offices. For example, during the summer, there are significantly more people who work from home than other times of the year, research has shown.
In the future, this could mean more companies allowing workers to work remotely for an entire month or two over the summer, while kids are off from school.
“Get the stuff done, but you can probably only work half a day. And that’s a huge perk,” Bloom said. “The upside of that is you buy a lot of loyalty, reduce turnover and have engagement from employees. It’s profitable for businesses.”