The Data Is In on Work From Home

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:09)
Are you team work from home, or are you team return to office? Last week, we asked you all to share your thoughts, and we got so many responses.

**Michael** (0:21)
Hey there Journal, my name is Michael.

**Jane** (0:23)
Hi, my name is Jane.

**CR** (0:24)
Hi, I'm CR, longtime listener, first-time caller, etc.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:29)
Some of you are very, very pro-remote work.

**Jane** (0:33)
I have been working remotely for the past two years, and I love it.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:38)
I can exercise, I can do my hobbies, I can go and run an errand.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:43)
I work probably 95 percent remotely, and I will say I think my work-life balance has never been better.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:53)
If they ask me to go to an office, I will quit.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:56)
But for others, there's a lot to love about the office.

**Lindsay Wilson** (0:59)
I am sick of fully remote work.

**CR** (1:02)
It bothered me not to have a consistent group of people that I went into the office and we worked together, and we were a team.

**SPEAKER_8** (1:12)
Sometimes I kind of wonder, how would my life be if I were to work in office? Would I get more exposure? Would I be able to get promoted quicker?
Would people truly see my value?

**Jamie McGee** (1:25)
Sometimes when you're working remotely, it can feel like you're shouting into the void.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:34)
But more than six years into this massive upheaval, what do we know about this big accidental remote work experiment? Is it good, bad, somewhere in between? How has it reshaped the economy, businesses, and our work lives?
From The Journal, this is Work Mode, a special series airing on Sundays, where we take a look at how work is changing.

**SPEAKER_10** (2:13)
This episode is presented by Accenture. When you're advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:53)
To understand the aftershocks of the remote work revolution, I called up a colleague.

**Owen Tucker-Smith** (2:58)
My name is Owen Tucker-Smith. I'm a reporter here. I cover the US economy and all of its facets.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:03)
Owen is 24 years old, so he's kind of a remote work native.

**Owen Tucker-Smith** (3:08)
So, I am Gen Z, solidly Gen Z, and I graduated from high school in the spring of 2020, which as we can all recall was a moment. Really in there.
I began college online. My first full year of college was remote classes. So before I really had any strong opinions about remote work, I had experienced remote school, which I think sort of shaped my early views about it. And so nowadays, you know, I primarily work from the office, but we do have kind of a hybrid bottle here.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:47)
I asked Owen to break down some of the latest research on remote work. What is the general picture that the data on work from home paints?

**Owen Tucker-Smith** (3:57)
The general picture is that it has led to a massive shift. So first of all, it has shown that, you know, even six years after the pandemic, remote work has become a new normal. People are still working from home a lot. And it also shows that people really like to do that.
When you look at, you know, the number of days that people work and how many of them are done at home, that number is around, you know, 26%. And so it's still more than a quarter of our hours worked, our remote hours. And when none of us convened the office, that number was very high.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:39)
Over 60%, according to Labor Department Statistics.

**Owen Tucker-Smith** (4:43)
And as people started doing return to office mandates, it dropped. But then the interesting thing is it sort of stopped dropping. Over the last few years, it has sort of seemed to reach something that almost looks like a floor that we aren't going below, which sort of suggests that remote work has become this kind of staple of the workplace for years to come unless there's a big change.

**Jessica Mendoza** (5:08)
Right. It kind of hit an equilibrium kind of thing. It's like this is where we're at, about a quarter.
Still, a lot of corporate America is pushing for a return to office policy. Meta, Amazon, Fidelity, Target, Home Depot, among many others, have all required their workers to be three or more days back in the office. One of the biggest proponents of returning to the office has been Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase.