Hopes that Return to Office will bail out the office sector of CRE seem premature: Data on office attendance and Working from Home.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The good folks in commercial real estate, including institutional investors, have been saying for over a year that the Return-to-Office mandates will scuttle Working-from-Home and fill up office space and boost the office sector out of its epic depression.
The media have jumped all over it with breathtaking headlines every time a company mandated a full five-days-a-week RTO, and enough companies have done so to keep these stories percolating, such as Tesla in 2022 already, then Amazon, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, X, Dell, etc. Lots of times, these in-office policies come with the explicit or implicit threat of “or else.” And the Trump White House has been in the news with its battle trying to force it to happen with whoever will be left working for the government.
But those media reports may be giving the wrong impression, and in fact very little has changed since the beginning of 2023 in terms of actual office attendance and the percentage of full paid days worked from home – which is what should matter to the CRE industry, rather than the breathless media reports. So we’ll look at these two data sets.
Office attendance has barely ticked up in two years.
Kastle’s weekly back-to-work barometer – which tracks how many people enter an office building for which Kastle provides the electronic access system – has barely ticked up since the start of 2023. Its weekly barometer measures office occupancy as a percentage of what it had been before Covid. So if pre-Covid levels of office occupancy come back, the barometer would rise to 100%, meaning same occupancy as before Covid, the good old days, so to speak.
But far from it. The average occupancy in the top 10 office markets in the latest week was still only at 54% of where it had been before Covid, so still down by 46% from pre-Covid, and only a few percentage points higher of where it had been at the same time in 2023, and just a hair higher than at the same time in 2024.
In the chart, the top gridline = 100% = pre-Covid level. The 10-city weekly average (red line) has been around 50% since the beginning of 2023, sometimes over, sometimes under. During the latest week, it was 54%, with Houston being at 65% at the top end and Philadelphia being at 44% at the bottom. The epicenter of WFH, San Francisco, was at 45% (chart from Kastle, click on the chart to enlarge it):
The prevalence for hybrid work shows up in the huge difference between the days of the week with the lowest occupancy, which for the month of January was Friday, with an average occupancy rate of 37% of pre-Covid levels, according to Kastle. The day of the week with the highest occupancy rate was Tuesday at 63%.
The average occupancy on Fridays in January was 28% in San Francisco and 30% in New York City. Even at the high end, in Houston, it was only 48%.
No decline in the share of WFH in 2023-2025.
Another data set shows the same principle from a different angle: The share of full paid days worked from home had spiked by mid-2020 to over 60%, in part because companies with office workers switched to WFH, and in part because other employment that could not be shifted to WFH, such as in accommodation and food services, collapsed. During that time, tech workers switched to full WFH and kept their jobs, while restaurants and hotel workers weren’t working at all.
But as the economy reopened, those service workers were called back, and the share of WFH as a percent of overall full paid days plunged. But for office workers, WFH has remained a big factor. As a result, the share of full paid days worked from home remains at far higher levels than before Covid and has not come down further in 2023, 2024, and in January 2025.
This according to the ongoing study and data collection by Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Shelby Buckman, and Steven J. Davis, published by WFH Research (based on the original paper: Barrero, Jose Maria, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, 2021. “Why working from home will stick,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 28731).
In January 2025, over 29% of all full paid days were worked from home, up a hair from the Januarys in 2023 and 2024.
So the share of WFH has given up about half of the Covid spike (which peaked in June 2020 at 62%) and then got stuck at a share that is roughly four times higher than it had been in 2019 (7%). While the author say that they may over-sample people who are “more tech and internet savvy, especially among the least educated,” the trend still works out about the same.
Of all full-time employees, 13% were full WFH in late 2024, while 26% were in a hybrid-WFH situation, so about 39% were at partially or fully WFH, according to the study. The remaining 61% were working fully on site.
WFH and hybrid arrangements dominated in these six industries, particularly in Information, which includes a lot of tech and social media companies, where only 28% of the full-time employees worked fully on site.
Percentage of full-time employees working fully on site, in a hybrid situation, or full WFH:
- Information: 28% fully on site, 51% hybrid, 21% full WFH,
- Finance & Insurance: 33% fully on site, 40% hybrid, 27% full WFH
- Wholesale trade: 44% fully on site, 40% hybrid, 15% full WFH
- Professional & business services: 45% fully on site, 30% hybrid, 24% full WFH
- Utilities: 49% fully on site, 28% hybrid, 23% full WFH
- Real estate: 49% fully on site, 40% hybrid, 11% full WFH
Hopes that RTO will bail out the office sector seem premature.
Turns out, many companies have stuck with hybrid work, often involving hot-desking, hoteling, and other arrangements, such as Google (3 days a week in office), Microsoft (50% of the time), Apple (3 days), Starbucks office workers (3 days), Adobe (2-3 days), Meta (1-2 days), etc., though they’re enforcing those days in the office more strictly, including on an “or-else” basis. Countless smaller companies have moved into the same direction.
And many many other companies, including Nvidia, Airbnb, Coinbase, Drobox, etc., and lots of smaller companies, startups, etc., whose employment is growing rapidly, have no RTO mandate at all. They have finetuned their WFH policies, created meeting places, and made lots of other adjustments to make remote work productive. For the company, it saves on office expenses, and it makes hiring good talent easier since WFH remains immensely popular. And it seems to be working for them.
But the media don’t write breathless headlines about companies’ sticking to and refining their WFH policies. These companies dedicated to WFH just don’t get that kind of screaming attention. And these companies wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work for them. So these hopes in the CRE industry that RTO will somehow refill offices and bail out the office sector seem premature.
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IMO, from what I see in Hawaii, the State gov’t is the worst offender. The past 4 years has seen the poor performance of State workers literally drop off the face of the earth.
here’s OPPOSITE DAY
today rode by NEW Industrial SPEC development of 100,000SF+-
SPACE AVAILABLE
had to be on 5-10 Acres
in Industrial area
——-
in my eastside RESIDENTIAL area have more STORAGE space being built
WE KNOW family – they ‘earn’ $500,000,000 MONTHLY
always looking for MORE COMMERCIAL INVESTMENTS
we can’t compete
I WFH (state worker but not Hawaii) 2 days a week. It works but you’re always gonna have a dept head or director that can only get an ego stroke in person not online.
2 days a week is one thing, but there are many government employees who no longer come in ever.
So? Why do you think they are less productive? Studies are clearly mixed, but for every study showing WFH employees are slackers, there is one showing they are more productive.
Granted, it takes a different type of employee and management to make WFH productive, but it can be done.
If the company I work for, $120b biotech pharma company is any indication, this trend is about to change for the worse soon, as far as RTO goes.
Will be getting a mandate from the CEO this Thursday, return to office 3 days a week or risk performance and pay impact, previously 3 days a week was the guideline but wasn’t strictly monitored. No longer the case now, I have a feeling this year the tide will turn and 5 day RTO will be the target by next couple of years unfortunately
For every company using it to reduce headcount, there are companies using it as a way to lure in talent.
Remote and hybrid working was a huge one off benefit provision to workers. Some businesses will now want to claw that back, seeing it as that. But there are many others who will use it in place of other benefits such as higher salaries.
That’s why stats presented here are so much more important than narratives that media outlets such as WSJ try to push.
True, I think another factor will also be down to how much leverage the employer think they have, if the employment market takes a turn for the worse rapidly, they might want more than 3 days or allow WFH period.
It’s a little comforting to see the data is not showing significant change with WFH and to my original post, maybe I am wrong in fearing this will get worse based on what I see at my company alone. Time will tell
Phoenix_Ikki,
But that leaves you still working from home for two days. You’re still not 5 days a week in office. WFH persists even at your company.
@Wolf, correct still 2 from home but I fear the pattern, before it was 2 days RTO, then 3 and now 3 with strict enforcement. It’s nature to expect 5 days is the next evolution especially when fancy HQ in Foster City is not being fully occupied
Our son works for city-youngest finance manager(29)
most are in 40’s 50’s
reports to dept head, but given his assignment when new ERP systems implemented – he designs custom reports, processes
—-
last week he needed to take vehicle to shop, and me vice-versa
had to wait since DIRECTOR of city needed complicated budget report
and given his under $100k position he is over used
he loves it, but I know he needs to be paid 50% more
however he won’t go, due to healthcare benefits for wife/child
>>he designs custom reports, processes
>>his under $100k position
>>he loves it, but I know he needs to be paid 50% more
LMAO
I’m sorry, but Tableau/SSRS/Qlik/Microstrategy folks (custom reports and such) are literally the first on the chopping block to be either outsourced to Bangalore or replaced entirely with AI, unless they posess some intimate domain knowledge that is hard to transfer/learn. I highly doubt they are paid more than 150k anywhere, except, in some insanely HCOL areas.
If I were friends with your son, I would strongly suggest him looking into adjacent fields or otherwise expanding/deepen his skills. And don’t get me wrong – this is not to bash his job or his skills – I am in a somewhat similar boat career-wise, and I already see how positions like this can evaporate overnight.
Work in local gov (county level) in an area that has had massive growth in the last 5 years and massive amounts of employee retirement as well. Every surrounding county has the same issue and some of them are realizing they can’t get employees in at the pay scales offered and are beginning to offer hybrid WFH to get applicants. Pay scales can’t get adjusted on a moments notice so it’s been a good way for them to get more interest. Our office lost a good applicant to another county that started 8k less, but he only had to work in office 2 days a week and felt that was worth the pay drop.
I also work for a hi tech company, with 100s of B in market cap.
CEO has mandated RTO 4 days a week minimum.
And what if you don’t comply?
1) Fire all these employees? Highly doubtful since they would need to fire their best. And if they can afford to lose their best over this, there are bigger issues with the business.
2) No raise and no promo? Wait until somebody figures out how to sue based on this.
Yes
A lot of people has been let go
And more compliance based lay off coming
It’s the same story with other fang employers.
Company is monitoring not only badge in but to exit you need to badge out as well. It means badging out is monitored as well
Using simple analytics It’s be easy to find out who is trying to outsmart the system
here’s different subject but related to economy
Washington Federal Bank ended all MORTGAGE ORIGINATON effective jan 17, 2025
what?
bank not lending
Poor Phoenix_Ikki, he will have to work like everybody worked before the pandemic: five days a week in the workplace. WFH was an emergency measure because of the pandemic, it was not supposed to be a permanent change in lifestyle. Some, probably a few, can successfully WFH. It looks like many companies have decided too many took advantage of it and it is back to work as usual. But don’t worry, it has been this way for over a hundred years. Show up to work or get fired.
If employees are “taking advantage of it”, that’s on management for not doing their jobs.
Yes, if the only way you can confirm your knowledge workers are working is by physically observing them with your eyes, you’re doing something wrong.
If you let somebody work from home, they will take advantage if it. Everyone. This is why you do not let anyone work from home. Ever. If you let anyone work from home for any reason, you are doing something wrong.
Marmar, “Gee, boss, yes, I am doing lousy work and deserve to be fired. But it is all your fault, not mine.” People blaming anyone but themselves for their problems.
“Yes, if the only way you can confirm your knowledge workers are working is by physically observing them with your eyes, you’re doing something wrong.”
Agreed – management by walking around has always been kind of insane – in contrast to management by objective/output/results.
Although I expect it had a lot to do with intentional management inefficiency, resource hogging, and over-hiring.
Basically,
1) Very, very few department heads every *really* wanted lower budgets/fewer reporting personnel. Although incentive systems try to encourage a profitability focus, way too many orgs (especially rich ones) still adhere largely to a “bigger means more money” mindset that leads to over-hiring.
2) Over-hiring leads to accumulated dead-wood.
3) Unless the dept head puts energy/brains into it, measuring employee worth can be haphazard/arbitrary.
4) So the default measure of corporate worth is “looking busy” (even if phony, counter-productive, etc.)
5) “Looking busy” is much more easily monitored in the office.
So pathology 1 (empire building in budget planning) produces pathology 2 (overhiring) producing pathology 3 (“looking busy”) resulting in pathology 4 (management by wandering around).
Over time, declining profitability rectifies all this (except in Government, which just prints more money) but the adjustments take place in discontinuous eruptions of panic (over-hire, waste, lose, panic, over-fire, rinse, repeat) – rather than just fixing the problem on the front end and having a smoother, calmer, less volatile life.
“management by walking around”
has never been about control or looking for performance indications. On the contrary, it has always been about making the manager personally available to the crew for questions and brainstorming and discussing issues and solutions on an impromptu basis, and being there personally as a real human … just being on the shop floor. It’s also good because it gets the manager out of the office and into the shop, and it allows the manager to gain respect for what people are actually doing, and under what conditions.
Management by walking around is useful in a place with physical work activities, such as a big repair shop, a fabrication shop, a warehouse, a big construction site, that kind of thing. Managers wouldn’t do it all day, but just a couple of times a day for a shorter period, grab the foreman and walk through the shop together and talk about stuff. I was a big fan of that.
If it’s being misused for control and evaluation purposes, it’s probably counterproductive.
Wolf’s reference to “management by walking around” is the Dave Packard “The HP Way” meaning of the term. In the Toyota Way, it’s called “gemba,” which is Japanese for “the actual place.” That’s the good management practice.
The old concept of the boss walking around telling people to get back to work, like the guard walking the chain-gang, isn’t necessary if you have good workforce analytics and AI observability in place.
I show up to work every day at 6am. In my home office. I usually work until five with a break for 1-2 hours around lunch. I and all of my totally remote colleagues are very productive. The company (~ 1500 totally remote) has specifically stated that it is committed maintaining our remote work culture. We all do “five days a week in the workplace” but there’s no reason that workplace has to be a physical office building.
“..a break for 1-2 hours around lunch.”
Another reason not to let anyone work from home. Ever.
@Gooberville Smack
Not necessarily. MustBeADuck starts at 6am. As long as he or she gets the total hours in for the day then their employer may be perfectly fine with a 1-2 lunch. In fact, they may prefer it as they can potentially get more possible hours of coverage during the day from the employee.
Goober illegal,
You need to evolve. You are becoming outdated. There are plenty of companies who have employees WFH and be very productive. If anything it can be more productive than paying a few bucks a square foot for office space for them.
Dinosaurs walk the earth.
I worked from home 25 years ago on dialup and we were using browser ftp. You get your work done just like you would at home, but you don’t have to pack a lunch or commute.
The jealousy of some people to be made because their boss isn’t squeezing them enough on travel expenses is odd. Do you celebrate when companies outsource too? Or is there only certain workers you support and the rest can be tossed away until you too are on the chopping block.
My company still does WFH and it’s utilized by guys like me who save driving time and daycare expenses.
Many of those who WFH do so for their children. RTO will keep the desire for children low. Which is fine by me, the country can just import it’s workers since only the well off can afford more than replacement level kids. Not sure you checked, but 2 kids in my city run $4k a month for daycare. It’s literally half as cheap to rent a house near my job and check on them than to pay for daycare.
Neither me nor my wife make so little that we could justify staying home, but now we spend all this money and can’t afford another kid. Not with health insurance running $1200 a month and food prices at $1000 now. $6200 for 2 kids!
Without universal healthcare and kicking the landlords out of their for profit position, this country is going to crater. But I feel you’re exactly the type that would rather us all live in poverty then for anyone at the top to stop robbing the people that actually make this country run.
how exactly do you avoid daycare expenses? It sounds like you are taking care of your children and not working. This is why WFH is starting to be reduced. All the people I know who have kids and WFH still send their kids to day care.
There is a special place in hell for people that want others to suffer just because they are angry with their lives (justified or not).
Unfortunately it also gets a President elected…….. just sayin
I have been WFH for almost 2 years now. My position is remote (enterprise data architect – yes IT) for a healthcare business based in NYC. I live in the DTC area of Denver and not having to commute to an office does make a world of difference. I just had my performance review for 2024 and my manager is happy with my work.
Working in IT for me means making my deliverable dates and keeping the business people and senior management happy. That I can do a under promise, over deliver and being a “good team player” help do that. Granted I have meetings, but not being in a office, means I can focus on my work much better.
Associating work with a specific location absent any consideration of the nature of that work is simply moronic. WFH and Hybrid were already emerging realities as a function of improved communications technology in the decade preceding the pandemic — the latter merely accelerated an inevitable trend.
Good management means understanding the nature of the work in question and arranging it accordingly — any blanket response absent analysis has some motivation other than efficiency and optimal human resource allocation.
2019 is never coming back regardless how many corporate dinosaurs and commercial real estate interests roar for its return …
Plenty of people and companies including my medical practice and business had people working from home very successfully for years well before the pandemic.
Productivity metrics don’t support the idea that people are more productive in the office.
The people who want return to office: micromanagers, people who want to escape their family, people who don’t get socialization outside of work, boomers who don’t understand technology.
As a salaried employee I’m paid to complete tasks, if the task takes me 2 hours and is supposed to take 10 hours or vice versa it’s irrelevant as long as my work is completed on time. Hourly employees are paid for hours.
I see this is as the great equalizer, wfh employees are judged based on productivity. Instead of the appearance of trying hard. I had a coworker who used to work 50+ hours a week. She always got a big bonus for trying so hard despite always missing deadlines and what not. People were like wow she does so much work. I on the other hand came in at 9 left at 5 every day and realistically worked about 20 hours a week and streamed Netflix on my phone over the office guest network and received a small bonus because I never went the “extra mile”. When she left I was temporarily given her work in addition to mine. I did both of our jobs in about 30hrs a week and it was done on time. My boss was shocked. But did they give me my salary + hers? No. Did the give me a bigger bonus? No. I’ve had similar experiences at other companies. Wfh makes it so only the output is judged, not the effort, like it should be.
Perhaps you should educate yourself before commenting. Plenty of workers are more productive WFH than in an office. The best companies will learn how to adapt as WFH offers them a huge benefit (lower real estate costs).
I’m also in bio manufacturing and our parent company is mandating 5 days per week in office starting this spring. We’ll see how that pans out.
Phoenix_Ikki, I’m assuming as a biotech pharma company, your actual products are very much data and evidence based. Do you feel the management practices are also evidence based? Has management shared any data supporting the RTO mandate, or is it just dogma?
Answer to this is no, no data shared and not evidence based. In fact stock is now the highest it has ever been for over a decade, actual just popped 7% today on earnings and outlook from Q1 earnings.
This is all driven because the CEO is still not seeing the numbers of folks at the office he would like to see in the ivory tower. I would like to invite the CEO to do a month worth of commuting from the valley to West LA and see how productive wasting 4 hrs on the road is like
Threshing and winnowing the grain from the chaff of today’s news, thanks WR!
So RTO is a failing scheme to save CRE. Whoda thought.
My first guess is that all the noise of the WFH mandates not showing up much in the office occupancy rates data indicates that WFH is layoffs lite. CEOs know that Wall Street loves productivity (talking tough I guess does this) and hates layoffs. WFH is a win-win, especially in tech where there is always the new thing and the only olds are in the c-suite.
Also, interesting that hybrid seems to be the standard. I imagine the reason for this is avoiding commutes, that drain the worker but don’t do anything for the company. Fun to think about what autonomous driving will do in the future. More leisure time? Less?
They will be the first to be replaced by AI or a foreign worker.
Non US workers are getting better training and doing better work. All for a fraction of the cost.
funny thing you mention AI
I’m mushing my head for how to utilize
I take in may PROFESSIONAL sources
and for once(I’m Programmer type) has someone convinced me to try AI adaptor
morning TAYLOR(swift) I need to write report on xyz topic Z+
please provide me with basic 5 page report
zingo – now I have idea on what to write on
so may possibilities
——
funny thing is I’m going to PAY FOR better AI product
$20 month = nothing given devaluation of fiat $dollar
“Non US workers are getting better training and doing better work. All for a fraction of the cost.”
You most likely have never had to call customer service! When i get a fluent English speaker that actually solves my problem, I feel like I won the lotto.
“commutes, that drain the worker but don’t do anything for the company”
I don’t see this talked about much but it’s huge. If you have an employee that has e.g. an hour drive each way, WFH 3 days/wk means the employee can work 3 more hours and have 3 more hours of free time.
Agreed. Former IT worker and my last ~5 years we started WFH 1 day a week then that progressed to 3 and sometimes if there was bad weather you could stretch it to 4. It made all the difference life wise and as you mentioned most of us never worried about a couple extra hours here and there so long as we could save the soul stealing commutes.
My ~8 mile commute into Boston takes approximately 45 minutes each way via MBTA. With 4 days in office / 1 WFH, commuting is a massive unproductive time sink. An entire 8 hour workday spent riding on the T each week. This is cost my employer twice, once for the time lost and once for the commute expense reimbursement. Going back to 5 mandated days a week in the office just doesn’t make sense.
Biochamp,
I used to commute from Watertown to Kenmore. 20 min walk to wtown yard and then a friggin hour riding the 57 end to end.
I ended up getting that 70-80 minute commute down to 20 mins by ditching the T and getting myself a 50cc scooter.
Highly talented employees in my industry can and do take less pay for WFH, employers who don’t understand this are missing out on many of the best people.
For us it was 2 days per week in 2023, 3 days in 2024 and rumors are we go to 4 days in 2025.
Looking at public transport stats that does seem to be a general theme. Definitely an increase last year, but not back to pre pandemic yet, but it’s slowly getting there.
anecdotally, i’ve heard of many remote workplaces order people back in a few days a week, but i haven’t heard of many hybrid workplaces order people back full time.
Washington D.C. is in a major crisis as all Federal workers have been told to report to work in the office or get fired. The roads here cannot handle the traffic as it is, and now they are going to dump 100,000 more commuter cars on the road. I don’t know how we are going to get into the city to do the work we have to do inspecting houses for the VA. To add to the misery, they’ve converted at least 20% of the lanes to bike lanes and there are major construction projects which lead to road closures all over the city. It’s going to be a nightmare. It’s the top news story here.
What a poorly thought out policy. Guess votes have consequences. Enjoy your commute!
it’s poorly thought out to make government employees actually do work?
we all know there are tons of people who when they “work from home” don’t do jack. couple that with government (lack of) accountability, and remote work for huge agencies is a bad idea, at least not until there is better oversight.
Ignorance.
Why does a persons location matter to how productive they are? Just because a person is WFH does not mean they aren’t productive.
Dinosaurs walk the earth.
I bet that most of what you “know” is silly nonsense fed to you by those looking to take advantage of your ignorance.
I know plenty of people who go into offices and don’t do jack, except now the employer has to pay rent for their cubicle and for an internet connection for them.
Dumb.
Usually I’m laughing at the dooming in these threads, but this one was different. Thanks for the laugh.
How did DC handle all the traffic previously?
ShortTLT
Previously, people were in car pools, used metro, or lived close to their work so they could bike or walk to their jobs. With the Pandemic, people stopped doing all of these things and started WFH or driving in their own cars as traffic dropped off temporarily. Now that the pandemic has ended, people now want to drive their own cars again (solo), but have given up on these other forms of transportation. The infrastructure was not designed to handle this volume of traffic. Add in all the UBER drivers who drive in DC like maniacs and it has become a nightmare driving down there post pandemic.
ShortTLT
“How did DC handle all the traffic previously?”
It didn’t actually. Even over 20 years ago when we were living in the DC area, it was a huge mess trying to get anywhere by car during the long periods of rush hour.
The Metro was good, but it was only useful for certain routines.
“it was a huge mess trying to get anywhere by car during the long periods of rush hour.”
But isn’t that normal in any city? I always avoided driving in Boston during rush hour back when I lived there – it was impossible to get anywhere.
Any comparisons to “back then” are faulty because of lack of accounting for variables.
Population increase, variables like traffic engineering (allocation to bikes, mass transit etc), and job location/ concentration are just the baseline.
I’m in Colorado, far from the Denver area/ Front Range, but I hear all the time how absolutely insane the traffic has gotten.
I have had a few samples myself over a couple decades, but the population explosion in the region, then the ongoing exodus to suburban/ outlying areas (spurred by the pandemic) is a real factor.
I also want to acknowledge: Wolf has all the hardest working people reading his site. Some people bragging about the multiple jobs they work, others just owning the fact that they’re (obviously) much harder working than anyone in the public sector, or at big companies. /s
We must all remember: the rain doesn’t fall evenly on the land. The land of the slave brags about self superiority. The land of the Free helps everyone (including the homeless and the overlord).
Oh boo hoo the Swamp Creatures have to be stuck in traffic like the rest of us. No more being lazy off my tax dollars buddy!
Are you rich from $TRUMP yet?
I sold at 60 lol. The whole memecoin space has not recovered. All in on bitcoin now
You are making dumb assumptions.
Just because a person is working from home it doesn’t mean they are being lazy.
Do better. Stop destroying the country eith ignorance.
Distribute DC headquarters over the US. Agriculture in DC? Better in Iowa.
BLM in DC? Better in Colorado.Solves traffic problem. And office space is less expensive
So this is how large the govt. workforce grew during covid and WFH
Next step is to get these offices out of dc.
Sounds like alot of commercial space available throughout the country.
I wonder if San Francisco experienced as great a retail collapse during the Great Depression as it has in the past few years. The latest prominent store that is having a going out of business sale is Bloomingdale’s in what used to be called Westfield Mall. As of this morning, most of the retail space in the mall appeared to be empty.
Department stores are dead meat nationwide. The culprit is Ecommerce. Most of the department store chains, from Sears on down, filed for bankruptcy. Most of them were liquidated, and they’re gone. There are only a handful of chains left. One of them is JC Penney which filed for bankruptcy but got bought out of bankruptcy by mall landlords to keep their malls alive. Every year, department store chains have closed hundreds of stores for years, the surviving ones, from Macy’s on down. Zombie malls dot the nation until they’re bulldozed and redeveloped into housing. These big malls turn to zombies after the anchor stores close, usually department stores. The lenders to malls have lost huge amounts of money. I have called this the brick-and-mortar meltdown since 2016, and it keeps on giving until all these brick-and-mortar department stores are gone.
But the online sites of some of the surviving department stores are thriving, such as Macy’s.
Westfield’s is closing or walking away from or selling ALL of its malls in the US. It started this process by walking away from two malls in Florida a couple of years ago. It finally walked away from its mall in San Francisco. But it’s only news when it happens in San Francisco, LOL?
I covered all of this stuff here — read these articles instead of posting nonsense:
https://wolfstreet.com/tag/brick-and-mortar-meltdown/
Sales at brick-and-mortar department stores nationwide:
I don’t think you can blame it all on e-commerce. I think some of it is the lack of wanting to socialize because politics have made people hate each other. I think the other part of it is retailers missing shifting consumer tastes. I’m the case of Sears, Eddie lampert saw it as just a real estate deal with no intention of saving the brand which still had a lot of value with all the brands they owned. Eddie really should have ended up in jail imo.
Well, yes, ecommerce made it very easily possible to not ever have to go to a department store again. I always hated big stores, always hated shopping. What a huge waste of time and energy. And frustrating too. As a result, long before the internet, I bought much of my stuff, from dress shirts to furniture, by catalogue and phone. Worked fine, but it was much harder or impossible to shop around like you can online, and you had to wait for a month or longer for this stuff to arrive. Shopping is a huge waste of time. I can spend 15 minutes online, shop around, and buy my stuff, and then go hiking, instead of ruining my Saturday by going from store to store. So the internet was a godsend for people like me. And eventually everyone figured it out. And that’s what you see.
In terms of the department stores, and other retailers, the weak ones got taken out first, then the less weak ones, then the stronger ones, etc. The remaining stores of the few surviving department store chains will eventually all close, but some of their ecommerce sites will survive and thrive.
I want to echo Wolf’s response that I cannot directly reply to.
Malls and department stores have always been one of American capitalism’s big mistakes. They are sterile and lifeless. It’s a much more pleasant experience to shop online and go do something else instead of walk through endless aisles with fluorescent hospital lighting.
If you miss the abomination of department stores either your paycheck depends on it or you have misplaced nostalgia.
I haven’t been to a mall in the last 10 years. The Westfields Mall near me used to be a regular hang-out for me when I had nothing better to do. All the stores I went in there like Radio Shack, Photo shop, Hot Shops, etc have all gone out of business. The businesses that are left cater to teenie-boppers, rich bored house wifes, and other losers. Food court has nothing but fast food and junk food. Crime and shoplifting are the only things happening there anymore. There is nothing in there for me. I do all my shopping on-line or in thrift shops. If and when this mall shuts down, I won’t lose any sleep.
The Sears catalog and JC Penny catalog were the first “Amazon”. It took a lot of paging through, and a long time to get stuff by mail. But it was still better than going to a store. I actually enjoyed looking through the giant Sears catalog. Long ago, you could actually buy a house using the Sears catalog. You can’t do that on Amazon.
Disagree as for me at least the malls near me (in Canada) act as a place especially for seniors & others to go out for coffee/meet/eat/socialize and they even have winter walking programs in the mall. Lot of positive memories for these malls as well historically going back to when I was barely a teenager. They represent one of the social networking for the community unfortunately less relevant now as humanity shifts more on-line with less in-person interactions. Sadly.
No Way!!!! E-Commerce has some pet to play, but the Elephant in the Room is the tapped out consumer!
I just did a quick search, which said 22.2% of total retail sales was online. That leaves 78%. And you say department stores are ‘dead meat’ nationwide. Time to wake up and smell the coffee, senior. “Lack of money, Honey!”
Stupid ignorant BS, result of 30 seconds of braindead googling.
Retail includes lots of stuff including gasoline and new vehicles that are difficult to buy online. But once you look at department store sales — they’re minuscule compared to ecommerce sales. Ecommerce sales = $300 billion a quarter; department store sales = $30 billion a quarter.
This is another process (increase in e-commerce at the expense of brick and mortar retail) that was already well underway in the decade preceding the pandemic that the latter merely accelerated. Before 2020 I hardly ever ordered anything online — now it’s the bulk of my purchases ex groceries and gas. Just like WFH and Hybrid, these changes are becoming permanent.
Valley Fair in San Jose seems to be surviving by becoming an indoor Rodeo Drive. Also more malls are sprouting bowling alleys. Eastridge, Valley Fair, and the Bowlmor is the only remaining remnant of Valco.
My local state line* mall is turning one of its former anchor stores into a giant casino.
*Just over the border of a state with no sales tax, so people cross the border to shop at this mall to evade paying the tax that they’d have to if they ordered online. Yet despite this we’re still getting a casino.
I’m almost at 5 years of 100% telework minus a handful of in person meetings I needed to attend. Fingers crossed that this continues but worse case I see is 2-3 days max. Makes no sense to return to office given half the team would likely be out and then it is hard to collaborate in person. I literally don’t remember what it is like to be in office but certainly don’t miss it. Plus right now there is literally no extra space so the cost would be significant. I also get a small telework stipend which is funny as I would pay to keep 100% given the time and money I already save.
Those who successfully, according to their bosses, worked from home will continue to do so. Those who fked around were either fired or forced to work at the office the first year after the pandemic. So, it is not surprising there has been little change over the past few years.
When employees work from home, supervisors and managers can’t walk around and see all the folks playing on their computer, checking stock prices or other non-productive activities that the “stay-at-homer’s” are most assuredly doing. Thus, management can’t gauge how much fat they have to cut. This is management’s primary function when they are not in BS meetings. This doesn’t have a thing to do with saving CRE.
Management’s primary function outside of meetings is to snoop over their employees’ shoulders and micromanage? Maybe if you hire garbage employees, which you probably do, because anyone with real knowledge and skill would choose to work elsewhere, for someone who actually knows how to lead.
Hello Peter…..whhaaaats happening!
As long as the work gets done, who cares if they check their stocks?
Unproductive?!?!
Checking my brokerage account and scheming to make money is by far* the most productive and important thing I do during a work day.
Remote monitoring tools give detailed analytics on empolyee actions.
Interesting now to see media “articles” on how WFH has a negative impact on productivity. Not supported by factual studies – which show productivity improves – for experienced workers.
Those “articles” lead me to believe that CRE and cities now understand the negative financial impact of WFH. And are attempting to force RTO in the name of “productivity”.
Tell me you are a terrible manager without directly saying you are a terrible manager.
If you actually have to have eyes on your employee, you are a terrible manager.
If last night’s superb owl ritual was an indication of what’s coming from the Eagle, Phoenix, the old order is out and the Executive branch doesn’t need either the judicial or legislative branch…they will be simply ignored…the amount of waste and graft is beyond alarming as US aid is rightfully scuttled…only 4 years…need to move fast…emergency surgery
Let’s sacrifice our democracy for a few billion that will go from medical and scientific research, towards a tiny percentage of the costs of corporate tax cuts and a symbolic yet non functional wall. The dollar will still spiral but US will lose relevance as we discard our scientific edge.
The NIH cuts are for “indirect costs”. I actually had a grant from NIH at a big university. I couldn’t believe how much “indirect costs” sucked out of the grant, money that could have been used to buy new equipment and hire grad students, or keep me and my staff doing research longer. Instead it went to administrative bloat and upkeep. Some of that is necessary, but when it gets to be 50% or more of the grant, it is just greed by the university bureaucracy. Trump and Elon want indirect costs to be no more than 15% of the total grant, which is about what happens with non-government grants. This seems fair. The large universities can use their massive endowments to pay for their administrative bloat.
Of course university workers are going to whine, especially administrators and deans, who actually know nothing about the research the grant was funded to do. They get fat annual salaries to do what any accountant can do in a day. It’s a racket.
Thurd, my understanding is that the admin costs are negotiated as part of the grant. So maybe they should scrutinize that better, but shoe-horning every grant into the same bucket doesn’t make sense when there are lots of variables. The 15% also applies retroactively to grants that have already been awarded and budgeted out, basically a breach of contract.
I’m all for cost savings but let’s do it right. This administration is and DOGE is painfully stupid and lazy. They should be thinking and putting in legwork to do things right, or at least appointing people with the work ethic and brains to do so, instead of flushing the meat and potatoes down with the fat. Not only is it going to be extremely detrimental to the US and the world, but they’ll be tied up in courts the next 4 years because they’re unwilling or unable to think anything through and execute strategically.
Ben R, there are few jobs more worthless than university administrators. I knew some who were the wives of faculty members, probably as an incentive for the “good” faculty members (the ones who bring in grant money) to stay at the university.
I am all for NIH giving grant money to those who will actually carry out legitimate research, which Trump and Elon also agree with. What we object to is huge additional amounts going to universities’ administrative bloat.
The media, democrats and universities have distorted the story, as usual, by telling only half the story. Research money will not be affected. Only the “indirect costs” will be affected.
Most of the “indirect costs” are costs directly needed to do the research. The research facilities, scientific equipment, utilities, IT infrastructure/servers/storage are essential core functions for research to be performed. Administrative costs are part of it and they can be bloated, but “indirect costs” is a poor term because research cannot happen without them.
Ben, nobody is saying there should be no indirect costs. 15 percent is the average indirect costs from non-government grants. The universities are basically screwing the taxpayers asking for greater percentages.
Furthermore, by reducing indirect costs to already bloated universities, the money saved could be used to provide more grants. So in fact more research could be done by keeping indirect costs at around 15%.
Third, I’m sure there are inefficiencies even though the vast majority of indirect costs are essential to conducting research. Still, people underestimate the costs associated with scientific research, and more importantly the benefits it has on the economy, healthcare, technological innovations, and our ability to remain globally competitive. Many of these grants pay for themselves multiple times over with economic benefits, and even that ignores the benefits the breakthroughs have to quality of life around the world. The fact is that these cuts will halt a great deal of scientific research which will have devastating long term effects on the economy and the future of healthcare. If you have children or grandchildren, it’s a huge L. Appreciate you sharing your experience and thoughts on the subject, much respect.
“I don’t have a spending problem, you just need to give me more money”
The problem is both spending and revenues, but neither side cares enough about the future to make reasonable compromises.
We have a tremendous spending problem. The solution isn’t blanket cuts to important government functions, without any research or thought about how funds are spent out what benefits the country and world get out of them. Especially when it’s done unconstitutionally. USAID for example is one of the few redeeming programs that the world (used to) look up to and respect America over. If we save a few billion while cutting medical research (NIH funding) but the future of US healthcare is extremely degraded, it’s not worth it. We need to be on the cutting edge of health research so our citizens can be healthy.
If we still have a democracy, most of these departments and roles will be reinstated, with back pay, so as much as the administration would like to believe they’re doing something, they’re subsidizing long vacations for government workers. What price do you place on the Constitution or democracy? I mentioned some of our spending problems – corporate tax cuts, pointless walls, $15 million tax payer subsidized superbowl trips. How about defense contacts to corporations that fund political campaigns. Your reading and thought can be very selective.
Ben R,
You’re always welcome to send the IRS some extra money if you feel these programs are important to fund.
BenR, USAID is not what its public branding would lead you to believe it is.
eg, i understand what USAID is and does, at a high level. USAID is not what the current administration or media tell you it is, either.
“You’re always welcome to send the IRS some extra money if you feel these programs are important to fund.”
Dumbest comment ever. It shows a distinct lack of understanding of what a democracy is as well as showing ignorance of the difference between discussing the rules of the game versus playing by them.
Shame on you. You are one of the reasons this country is starting to fail.
Yes. You.
Anecdotal:
1. State of Ohio just ordered everyone back 5 days starting in March
2. If you head over to Reddit, you’d think the world was ending due to RTO mandates.
3. My clients have been slowly, but steadily, getting the majority of their staff back to the office 4-5 days per week. If anything what I’m seeing among my clientele (primarily 50 – 250 employee organizations) is greater flexibility to allow work from home when needed (childcare, contractor, feeling under the weather, etc.).
4. My company has been fully in-office, but we keep very flexible – most people work at least one day from home.
A happy employee is a productive employee…overpriced zombie bad lighting office buildings are a relic of times past..extend and pretend is over, take the loss, be grownups, move on and demolish the dinosaurs…
I have been WFH for 5 years similar to Glen. There have been rumors of RTO where I am now but I am hoping to dodge and stay home. The area I am in is mostly remote and spread across the country anyway.
I left my last position when they started to switch from WFH to hybrid. We were called in one day per week and I could tell they wanted more. The RTO was a morale and productivity disaster. Output dropped about 50% and the in office day was mostly goof off time with everyone depressed that they needed to be there. We were sitting in a room together on teams calls, etc.
So I left.
Yes, they need you back in the office so inefficient idiots can talk your ear off about sports or whatever irrelevant BS they want to waste their day yapping about when you’re trying to get work done. Imagine the costs of lost knowledge, hiring worse employees, and spending months or years trying to get them back to where the better employees they alienated were at before they quit. Most pushing RTO will pat themselves on the back without opening their eyes to the damage done. And the hard workers will enjoy greener pastures.
I can’t wait for RTO to get more people back in. Then our golf courses around here will be open for us retirees to finally get decent tee times during the day.
🤣❤️
I heard that it’s Anthony week to book a tee time for his foursome 3 days in advance. Has to get up at 3AM this week, to get on the phone to try to get a tee time. Even at that ungodly hour he has to hit the repeat button 50 times to get through to a live person. When he does finally get through he gets routed to a Bot automated machine.
I want to see a repeat of the Reagan Air Traffic Control firing in 1981. Order every government worker back to the office whether they can do their work remotely or not. If they don’t come back, give them a deadline of 1 week or so, then declare them AWOL. Then under Civil Service Regulations they can be FIRED. Don’t talk about it, just DO IT!
Already being done at HHS, though slower than your proposed timeline. Managers by 2/24. All others within 50 mi by 3/17. Staff hired as remote will report to “an” office by 4/28.
Our business has all support employees (clerical and IT) working from home, 12 people, we have done this for years, with great success and no issues, we retain people better because they don’t have to commute, and can do tasks at home or child care in between. The RTO managers are making an error and will lose many excellent people.
Child care while wfh
Lol
Remote work is a global phenomenon because alotta smart people work from home…
Howdy Folks. Some work from home folks have other paying jobs too. Its possible they are going to lose both jobs and you would have even less folks needing that office space….Always takes a long time for real estate bubbles to deflate.
The Kansas City Chiefs have lost 3 super bowls to teams located in the 30th state, 27th state and 2nd state being Pennsylvania adding to 59 like super bowl 59…perfectly scripted by the numbers…
Did you figure that out while working from home?
The stock bubble/everything mania continues on, so so does pretend to work from home.
Wolf is full time WFH + overtime!
I guess he doesn’t have to worry about parking or obnoxious ride share drivers! No need to worry about car accidents on the way to work or road ragers flipping him off.
Wake up Wolf – another commenter suggested you add the word ‘look’ to your work.
“Look Wolf, you missed the work ‘look’. 😁
Wolf is fast asleep at his desk with his head on a tiny pillow. Too many hours, Wolf.
What did Jack Nicholson say – “All work and no play make Wolf a dull boy.”
You could hire me as your proofreader, but then I’d have to work away from home!
Looks like all these RTO mandates by those with investments in Office CRE isn’t working out too well for them now. I’m glad to see it. They kept building office space in cities even when there was ample available office space before the pandemic hit.
I have been wfh for about 6 years now. I work part time, I like the flexibility and will push back my retirement as long as I can have this arrangement. The work is pretty heavy R&D and everyone in the small company is wfh.
I just replaced my WFH data compiler and analyst with an AI project that a computing intern worked on the last few months for generating reports. Now looking at what else we can streamline. Feels exciting actually.
I bet you don’t even realize you are cutting bone and muscle rather than fat. Arrogance can be a hell of a drug that makes a person miss the obvious.
Lots of family households have cut their vehicle inventory down 1. The additional cost of insurance, repairs, and maintenance is substantial part of budget. I guess these folks will be back in the new car market shopping for vehicles. We all work for someone, I guess many may not have a choice but 2 RTO. The swamp in DC will continue to be a 3 ring circus for next 4 years. There is powder keg brewing in CA, IL, and NY. 🇺🇸 is the #1 soap opera in the world right now.
We went from two cars to one like you suggested due to WFH. It tilts the scale even more toward avoiding RTO or hybrid because now I have to go get a vehicle if I need to be at the office regularly.
My old job offered me a decent bonus to stay, but after taxes it would not even cover the car I would have needed to buy so I said adios!
To be relieved of, the commute, into the rat race, is a luxury.
Ying and the Yang, your views may vary.
I work in IT. Working from home has been good for me, but it has also opened my company to getting more out of me without fail. The lines of work time are blurred when my laptop is always steps away. No commute is just filled with more work time. Fantasies of people screwing around is propagated by old boomer managers who don’t understand their workforce and don’t know how to the work is done. Execs who love all this just enjoy lording over a body of people so they can feel powerful. The control freaks don’t like WFH. And if your workforce is all remote you can have exec office suites with big perks, have assistants running around for you, joke with your colleagues in the hallway, go on extended martini lunches and flirt with young impressionable interns.
Bingo.
Bad micromanagers don’t realize that having certain employees WFH can make them much more productive. They are not tied to commute clocks and are more readily available. For every minute they waste doing laundry while working, you will get back in spades. Furthermore, assuming people do not waste time while in an actual office is absurd bordering on the dumb.
When my wife is working from home and she gets up to use the rest room and get a drink, she isn’t stopped 3 times by co-workers. No one is stopping by her cubicle and talking her ear off about their kids weekend soccer game.
Thank you once again for providing data that contradicts media hype – this is what we read Wolfstreet for.
Can you give an indication of how representative the Kastle data are ?
Kastle provides premises access systems for 2,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses across 47 states and a total of 1.8 million badge holders. Their 10 city index represents 300,000 office badge holders so it’s a pretty decent sample size.
Analytics company placer.ai also compiles a back-to-the office index but uses mobile device location data instead. They also show the same trend as Kastle… a rapid rise in return to the office until around 4Q2022 whereby it stalls one only rises by a few percentage points since.
I suspect what’s holding back a lot of companies is a fear of losing high performers to other businesses with more flexible work arrangements. I also suspect (and I have heard some anecdotal evidence for this) that “on the ground” hybrid schedules are often in effect in various businesses despite official mandates in place… again, for fear of middle and lower management losing folks to other organizations.
At the end of the day, impartial stats from outfits like Kastle and Placer confirm this, despite, as Wolf notes, sensational media stories suggesting otherwise.
Kastle’s barometer tracks over 300,000 Kastle users in 10 big US office markets — the 10 cities you see in the chart.
“With a sample size this large, our index relies on a meaningfully larger dataset than many of the most trusted and widely used economic and business statistical surveys,” Kastle says.
“In Manhattan, our data from 200 buildings and 70,000 cardholders represents the full range of New York City office occupiers and is drawn from a much broader set of properties within Manhattan than any publicly available source. This dataset not only includes iconic properties, with nearly two thirds of the sample coming from Class A commercial buildings, but importantly, also includes a range of other buildings that make this reflective of the city’s entire office real estate market,” Kastle says.
It lines up with Bloom’s data (second chart), which is based on a very different data set generated from a large survey of all workers, not just office workers. So both combined give me some confidence that we’re looking at something close to reality.
Right now I am WFH, day starts at 8 with checking emails for any problems that might have brewed up overnight, followed by “starting” work at 8:30. Walk around every hour or so for a couple minutes. Have lunch around noon. Since everyone is spread out in the US and 2 other countries day does not end till 6:30pm. They force WFH, its an hour commute total plus about 90 minutes to get out of the building, and get some lunch. All that will have to fit in 9-5 day. I’ll be damned if I work beyond 5, and no offhours support either. So there you go.
The politically correct thing to say is WFH is “greener”, which it is in my case.
The politically incorrect thing to say, but completely accurate in my case, is that every step closer to the office increases my probability of being a crime victim / murdered.
This is what I found on the FBI’s website after 15 seconds on Google:
“In 2011, in incidents of murder for which the relationships of murder victims and offenders were known, 54.3 percent were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.); 24.8 percent of victims were slain by family members.”
Yikes!
One useful thing I have learned in life: “Trust no one.”
Everyone in Chicago is related.
Here’s the latest available data on LIRR ridership; the largest US commuter railroad: https://www.mta.info/document/138216
>2023 annual ridership
A little out-of-date, no?
Tell me what a wfh mushroon can do that AI cannot do.
There will always be the few that can name their terms as they have something to offer, the other 99 percent not so much.
Do not worry about DC traffic. It will take time to work through the system and most will be fired and traffic will improve.
There are many options. A local company is doing rto, but it will not be downtown. They will have fewer staff in smaller locations. In good areas near schools ect. By the way this was an AI model.
Lots. AI is not the end all be all. AI just makes good workers more productive. I recently talked to my lifelong friend from back when I was a programmer. He is working for a company that recently thought they could replace all of their programmers with AI. Programming is one of the places where AI is generally better than humans.
However, on the more than rare occasion that AI doesn’t quite clearly understand the inputs, the code produced can be wrong. Wildly wrong. Someone has to be there to get it right. They have ti understand what the AI is doing as well as what the business needs.
Anyway, a small part of his job (20%) is using AI to produce code. It is quicker and genuinely more accurate than humans. However the other 80% of his job is finding out what went wrong with AI produced code and fixing it.
AI will make good people more productive. It will never truly replace everyone.
When I emailed my bosses the results of my 4 hours of WFH, and compared that with what I could do in office with all the interruptions from phone calls, other staff in person visits, etc., they told me to WFH all I wanted, 2007.
IMHO, it is very clear that for some kinds of work, especially when the results are very clear and easy to quantify, WFH is the best way to go,,, but equally clearly, NOT all work.
I’m a WFH optimist. What, exactly, did having millions of people commute from their homes to a second building contribute to anyone’s life or to any business’ bottom line? The cost of that 2nd building came out of worker salaries and shareholder returns. And yet, workers are willing to take lower wages in exchange for WFH and shareholders are willing to pay higher multiples for companies with lower fixed costs and capital-intensity.
These large banks and tech companies mandating RTO come across as being ideological, or being afraid to learn new management techniques. Yet those new management techniques for WFH workers ARE THE NEW TECHNOLOGY that allows corporations to unlock billions that are tied up in money-sucking office real estate. It is the “new tech” that allows workers and shareholders to split the savings from commuting costs.
I’m bearish on the many legacy tech companies and banks mandating RTO. Writing code and working spreadsheets are exactly the sorts of activities that should be ideal to exploit the WFH opportunity. I predict these dinosaurs will be outrun by competitors who have lower overhead costs, lower employment costs, and an enhanced ability to recruit talent across a wider geographic range. Opportunity and business innovation wait for no one.
WFH only works when you have good talent and their own abilities to manage time and work product excel.
On a side note I’ll be flying out to SF next week and will be culling the WFH crowd from a tech startup as after a review I can’t figure out what they are doing other than passing emails once a blue moon and collecting a high 6 figure salary.
The high performers will stay and have all the benefits but the dead weight always seems to enjoy these perks while ruining it for the rest of the crowd sometimes. Had to convince the CEO / CFO and VC to keep the best one’s with their perks as there is one guy is the 3x better than anyone in the firm and works from an island in the Caribbean for like half the year.
“What, exactly, did having millions of people commute from their homes to a second building contribute to anyone’s life or to any business’ bottom line? ”
A lot more work related romances? Divorce lawyers are secretly pushing for RTO.
I am as bullish as anyone when it comes to WFH (see the rest of my comments on this article). That said, there are some intangible benefits to being in an office. Random human interactions can produce product that wouldn’t normally happen remotely. I.E. I am getting a drink of water and run into you, while making small talk I mention a problem I am having. You mention a solution I wouldn’t have thought of. Great.
Also, it smoothes interactions. If I know your kids names and you know mine, it is more likely I will feel more comfortable approaching you with problems than if we were remote strangers. I may see a problem with your input into my process, but I am unsure of what it is or why it is there. If I do not have a personal relationship with you, I am less likely to approach you until I am positive it is your input.
That said, modern WFH standards are evolving and adapting. Workers are learning how to approach remote strangers with potential problems in non-threatening manners. Workers are evolving. People are more willing to give remote strangers the benefit of the doubt.
Times are changing. Some people and companies won’t adapt and they will die.
How things have changed for government workers. When I was there we had to work 40 hours in the office and another 20 to 40 hours on our own time for no overtime or extra pay. The home office was used to extend the workday using your own utilities, rent, taxes, Internet and workspace. We had On-line training mandates that had to be completed at home using our own computers. If we didn’t do that we got an UNSAT performance appraisal, which affected our pay. Now we have whining dogs in the government and government contractors complaining that they have to report to the office for even one day of the week.
Wait…what ? That’s like the walking 5 miles to school with no shoes story. Nice try Swampy
anecdotal evidence of very little rto in my neighborhood – its older nice – multiple parks- golf course- amenities – they all packed m-f with younger folks -wfh !- very different precovid – not seeing any rto none zero zilch – I don’t golf but my buddies speak wistfully of pre-covid when t times were available the night before now its 10-14 days
WFH increases productivity.
WFH reduces accidents
Wear and tear on cars
Wearing down of roads
Less spending out for food
People eat healthier which reduces healthcare
People get more sleep which reduces healthcare
People need to buy less clothes
We use less gas which is good for environment
WFH is the best thing to happen since Bitcoin was invented.
I guess you could say the same thing for homeschooling also.
I only sent my seven children to school for two things: sports and social activities. They all graduated from college with worthwhile degrees and each of them makes far more money than I ever dreamed of.
I once heard that the sign of a successful parent is if the kids are more successful than the parents. I say you have been successful in raising your kids.
My comment was not to belittle homeschooling or public schools just the fact that all those things listed by Jon could also apply to the process of homeschooling kids.
Jon, other than increased productivity, literally everything you listed is bad for the economy. You need to buy cars, depreciate roads, destroy the environment, and most importantly, by all means, live as sickly a life as possible to be dependent on excessive healthcare, so these old guys can die with a few extra dollars in the bank
I don’t like the WFH model. Just a personal choice. Not everyone has to agree. It would take me a whole page or more to explain why.
But I do like the work model concept of “Sunlighting” . This is the opposite of “Moonlighting” .
In the old days, it was fairly common for government workers to commute to an office somewhere, and work some private self employed business “Sunlighting” right out of their government office. I must confess that nearly everyone I worked with including myself did that. People I knew bragged about it. Those days ended long ago. When I left government, things had flipped as I previously posted, where government workers where I worked put in 40 to 50 hours at the office and another 20 hours at home just to keep up with the workload. We had to pay for work related travel out of our own pocket on our own credit cards, and never got reimbursed. If we complained we got an UNSAT performance appraisal.
I stand corrected. I heard on my local news that the figure of Federal workers in the DC Metro area now forced to commute to work vs WFH is not the 100,000 which I posted above. The figure is 500,000 in this Metro area. The traffic is already gridlocked in the rush hour before this RTO mandate was just issued. Add in all the home delivery Amazon delivery workers, and UBER drivers and this place is going to be hell on earth.
Thanks Wolf. I enjoyed reading the article and all the comments. I retired April 1, 2000 so will be retired 25 years in April. The goal has become to live longer than I was employed, at 31 years.
In 1985 I was a member working on a team to move all refinery operations to computer control. The last recommendation I made was to have operations shutdown the computer and operate manually at least once a month. Don’t think it ever happened but recall a botched airplane landing in San Francisco some years ago where the pilot couldn’t make an emergency landing.
My second concern would be, what happens to mentoring and grooming the upcoming replacements after promotions? Simply to keep the business successful. In wfh my bet would be we see the business begin to fail and all those rto’s will continue to operate.
Reminds me of a retirement where the lady paid demurrage charges to truck drivers when the plant didn’t have product and they were scheduled to arrive. Her replacement didn’t know what the charges were so simply placed the invoices in a bottom drawer, for a year. By the time it got to me I was confronted with two supervisors who hadn’t a clue. The old email to both and their manager found answer to the problem
I don’t sit around and enjoy the free time. There is always learning, repairing, and work of some type to keep busy. Retirement is doing the enjoyable things and keeping up with the world in all things.
So help me understand the ongoing operation of all the wfh crowd!
Never forget, in mid-March 2020 the elite colleges in the northeast who fist pulled their fire alarms to head for the hills. I hope their endowments are loaded with CRE/office investments.
That eccentric university chemistry professor/ ubiquitous doomsday podcast guest gave a 5 day heads up on the whole thing before it unfolded.
There’s no WFH when you’re hands on and maintain and construct electricity lines. Yet i like this WFH trend.
Also, what’s WFH for a Policeman, Fireman, Carpenter, Plumber? (excuse me, Police people, Fire people, etc. for those …
Yes, there’s great gravity for those monitoring these events from WFH and have to coordinate things, but they are not in the trench.
Management vs Labor 4evah
It’s been “police officers” and “firefighters” since forever. No need to make up new words to suit your narrative.
I have to wonder how many companies who own their office space are forcing return to office to avoid having to take an impairment loss which would hit their earnings numbers.
From what I remember of US GAAP, if an asset isn’t in use and won’t be in the future you can’t depreciate it. Assets are depreciated over their useful life. I believe it would then be written down to fair market value and reclassified on the balance sheet.
Although this won’t impact WFH, it’ll impact W from anywhere and nudge the CRE space into reexamining a new crisper reality:
“ The Associated Press reported that, two weeks ago, regional managers for the GSA were ordered to begin terminating leases on the federal government’s entire, nationwide stock of 7,500 rented offices.”
We don’t need the buildings or the people inside them — done
From over two weeks ago with actual details by city and square footage, because this is going to be a problem for office CRE:
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/01/25/doge-seeks-to-shed-vast-amounts-of-government-office-space-heres-how-much-the-government-leases-and-where-and-what-it-can-shed-during-trumps-term/
Wolf, I have to comment on this one, because you’ve basically done the same analysis I did last year when Stanford (SIEPR) published its research hybrid, which I combined with the Colliers and CBRE data on RTO. The reason was to try to throw cold water on all the E1/E2 execs in my company of over 50,000 employees who eagerly await each Kastle update for signs of the great RTO migration. It ain’t happening.
When you piece together all the trends you begin to see colossal structural change that is rapidly approaching with an unprecedented set of negative externalities to manage through. Part of what the media is doing is distracting the public from the large scale job obsolescence that is to come. We keep hearing about AI driving productivity and optimizing the revenue side, which is partially true, but when you look at executive pulse surveys and how they are planning for future workforce needs it becomes clear that a lot of market value will be created at the expense of middle class headcount.
Yes, to all of it. Good observations.
I’m approaching my third year of full time WFH and it has been an interesting time. I work in a call center for a Fortune 500 casino company making reservations for customers and answering their questions. Not only the front line employees work from home full time but so do the supervisors and staff. Managers are mostly hybrid coming into the office as needed.
For the most part this works reasonably well with the biggest problem being the technology headaches of asking dozens of frontline employees with few IT skills to troubleshoot the problems of fifteen computer programs. We keep a small call center at the casino for anyone who needs to work from the office to use but it is mostly unused. Frankly I don’t think I would be more productive at either the office or at home… it is just scut work that has to be done by someone somewhere and the work doesn’t really change by the employee’s location.
Contrast that with my work for the Census 2020 five years ago when a hybrid WFH system was started. That work required a lot of interaction between different groups of employees. Problems that popped up which could be resolved quickly in an office setting required days to schedule meetings with all affected parties to work through them. There is no question that being in the office made us more productive.