Radostina Pervanova of Drake University and Alana Mitchell of Drake University (conversation)
Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic disrupts office life, the American workplace has settled into a new rhythm. Remotely friendly employees now spend an average of 2.3 days each week at home. This is a research team that tracks remote employment. And when you see all the workers, they work remotely, not only remotely friendly positions, but they work remotely at 1.4 days a week, or 28% of the time.
This is a major change since 2019, when remote work accounted for only 7% of pay sales days nationwide, even if it fell from the height of the 2020 pandemic, when 61.5% of all work was remote. And that was a huge leap from the dawn of telework in 1965. At the time, less than 0.5% of all paid work days were out of offices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As a management professor studying remote work and collaboration, we have learned a lot about the challenges of remote work and the often underrepresented benefits. In analyzing the latest data, it has been observed that employers and employees are trying to balance their work at home and at the office. Therefore, employers’ requirements for in-person work may not always match employee preferences.
Hybrid work is increasing
Employers quickly jumped to remote work in 2020. Zoom became commonplace overnight, along with other unfamiliar collaboration software companies.
Five years later, many employers, including JPMorgan, Tiktok, Amazon and the federal government, have refused to work remotely and are demanding that employees return to the office full-time.
However, these examples are not standard.
According to the Flex Index, it tracks quarterly workplace strategies for over 10,000 US companies, with totally diminishing work within the office. In early 2023, 49% of employers claimed that staff report to the office every day. That percentage fell to 32% at the end of 2024.
Companies are also retreating from remote-only jobs. In 2023, 31% of employers were completely far away, but at the end of 2024 only 25% had been completely far away.
Instead, businesses are increasingly turning to hybrid arrangements, with employees spending part of the week in the office. Approximately 20% of professional workplaces were hybrids at the start of 2023. Just two years later, the hybrid share rose to 43%.
Some industries are farther than others
The story of remote work is more complicated than the general trends suggest. Its prevalence varies widely by industry, location and employer size.
The technology, insurance, telecommunications, professional services, media and entertainment industries are one of the biggest adopters of long-term remote and hybrid arrangements.
The states where remote and hybrid jobs are most popular are Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and California. The least popular states are Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Nebraska and Alaska. In part, some of these regions’ differences are due to the concentrated areas of remotely friendly industries such as technology and insurance.
Companies with employees of less than 500 are most likely to employ remote work. Staying connected and coordinating with colleagues is the easiest for small teams, we observed. Medium-sized employers with between 500 and 25,000 employees are divided entirely equally into office, remote and hybrid strategies. Very large employers with over 25,000 employees are most likely to employ hybrid work.
These patterns indicate that remote work tends to be more popular among small employers, and in remotely friendly industries and states, hybrid work finds homes for large corporations.
What employees like
Remote work stories are also complicated as employees have developed different preferences for employee work, hybrid work and remote work since it subsided over the course of the pandemic.
According to a Zoom survey, in 2024, around 25% of professional employees preferred office work, 35% preferred remote work, and 40% preferred hybrid work. Even recent college graduates have expressed a variety of preferences. 15% prefer to work in the office, 20% prefer to work remotely, and 65% have rather hybrid schedules.
However, the ideal balance between office and remote work remains a point of competition. Employees support three days at home and two days at the office, while employers prefer to disagree. A Zoom investigation found that two people were working remotely for three days in the office.
Generally, the future of work looks hybrid. But remote work on lockdown days (now known as “completely remote”) will also remain here.
This is good news for those who prefer a completely remote job. These employees are often parents or care for adults who need help. They live in a rural community or are too far from the office to commute regularly. Many LGBTQ+ employees and people of color have expressed their preference for remote work as a way to limit the microaggressions they experience at work.
There are no workplaces on the 5th anniversary of the Covid-19 lockdown. And we believe that is a good thing.
(Conversations are the source of an independent, non-profit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
This article will be republished from the conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/us-workers——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Original issue: March 13, 2025, 1:37pm
