Working remotely has become an unquestioned part of peoples’ professional lives in the past few years. However, as people return to their pre-covid habits again, the question arises: should working from home remain common?
One way to gauge whether or not American businesses are still in favor of remote work is to look at the statistics about how many business establishments still engage in remote work. According to the Labor Department report from last week, about 72.5% of business establishments said that their employees rarely worked remotely or didn’t work remotely at all last year. While that figure may not mean much to you on its own, when you contrast it with 2021’s percentage which was 60.1% it becomes more evident that remote work is starting to become less common. Another interesting note is that in February of 2020, right before Covid became a widespread hindrance on the economy, the percentage of these business establishments that said that their employees worked remotely rarely or didn’t work remotely at all was 76.7%. When juxtaposed with the new 72.5% figure from this past week, it could be said that the work environment is returning to its average state of in-person to online ratio. The survey that the labor department did also showed that there were about 21 million workers who returned to the working in-person all the time in 2022. With this data, there is a strong case that there has been an increased desire for in-person work to return.
That said, it hasn’t been equal across industries. For example, the share of businesses engaging in a hybrid work environment, meaning they spend some of their time in the office and some remote, decreased from 13.4% from 2021 to 2022, whereas for the financial establishments like banks that decrease was 22.9%, nearly double the average. This is particularly relevant for many Bentley students as we have lots of finance majors. If you happen to be one of those students, just keep in mind that you’ll likely be expected to work in person for an internship or job, likely sooner than those in other professions.
Speaking of other professions, the graph shown above illustrates that each industry of the labor market has its own, unique percentages in terms of how many establishments within that industry allow remote work of some kind. The most notable industry outliers compared to the U.S Private Sector are obviously Information, Professional and business services, like consulting, and the more blue color industries of retail, construction, natural resources and mining, and accommodation and food services. This makes sense, as information technology firms can easily work from home since most of their work can be done online on a computer anyways. Same goes for professional and business services like HR or consulting. The low percent outliers for blue color jobs also make sense: after all, if you think I alone could build you a house for you over Zoom, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Either way, while it’s important to understand that in-person work is becoming more normal again, the takeaway here is that you still should research what your industry’s specific expectations normally look like if you’re hoping to predict your working situation.
Lastly, I’d like to mention that not ALL of the data points towards in-person being the new trend again. The Labor Department noted that the share of establishments that were fully remote rose slightly last year, to 11.1% of establishments from 10.3% in 2021. That rise, though not as significant of a percent change as some of the other percent changes I’ve mentioned in this article, is still situationally significant when juxtaposed with the other data. It may suggest that even if most jobs go back to being in-person, we all learned something from the pandemic: there actually are advantages to online work and systems in place to do work online now that are better than they ever were before. So, while many who prefer in-person work will enjoy the trend changes we’re seeing in motion, there likely still is a community of jobs which allow for remote work for those who prefer it.
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