The pandemic-era trend of working from home remains a key feature of the U.S. job market — and is likely to stay entrenched as a permanent perk for a broad swath of the American workforce, according to labor economists.

The pre-pandemic baseline of going into an office five days a week “is dead” for many workers, said Nick Bunker, an economist at job site Indeed.

“Remote work is here to stay,” Bunker said.

Workers and companies see benefits of remote work

In 2019, about 5% of full-time work was done from home. In April and May 2020, the share of remote work ballooned to more than 60%, equivalent to almost 40 years of pre-pandemic growth virtually overnight. The share of remote work has steadily declined to about 27% today, but is likely to stabilize around 25%. Initially, remote work was seen as a necessary measure to contain the spread of the virus, but both employees and companies subsequently discovered benefits beyond an immediate health impact. Employers enjoy higher employee retention and can recruit from a broader pool of applicants.

Job seekers polled by ZipRecruiter say they’d be prepared to take a 14% pay cut to work remotely, on average. 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.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/03/the-future-of-remote-work-labor-experts-weigh-in.html

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