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Workers and companies see benefits of remote work
Some workers have shown they’re reluctant to relinquish those perks. Companies such as Amazon and Starbucks, for example, recently faced a backlash from employees after announcing stricter return-to-office policies.
Employers enjoy higher employee retention and can recruit from a broader pool of applicants, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. They can save money on office space, by recruiting from lower-cost areas of the country or by raising wages at a slower pace due to workers’ perceived value of the work-at-home benefit, she said.
It’s almost impossible to find anything in economics that changes at such speed.
Nicholas Bloom
economist at Stanford University
For example, job seekers polled by ZipRecruiter say they’d be prepared to take a 14% pay cut to work remotely, on average. The figure skews higher — to about 20% — for parents with young children.
Twitter recently shut its Seattle offices as a cost-cutting measure and told employees to work from home, a reversal from an earlier position that employees work at least 40 hours a week in the office.
“The benefits for employers are pretty substantial,” Pollak said.
Hybrid work model is a ‘win-win’
“Hybrid is pretty much a win-win,” Bloom said.
Of course, not all workers have the option to work remotely. About 37% of jobs in the U.S. can plausibly be done entirely at home, according to a 2020 study by Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman, economists at the University of Chicago.
There are large variations by occupation and geography. For example, jobs in retail, transportation, hospitality and food services are far less likely than those in technology, finance, and professional and business services to offer work-from-home arrangements.
Remote work may endure even in a recession
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/03/the-future-of-remote-work-labor-experts-weigh-in.html