Full-time office work is ‘dead’: Experts on the future of remote work

According to a survey, job seekers said they would be prepared to take a pay cut to work remotely. (Representative image)

Remote work or the pandemic-era trend of working from home is likely to stay a key part of the job market, at least in the US, experts said amid calls from companies to persuade employees to ease into a hybrid model.

Nick Bunker, an economist at job site Indeed, told CNBC that the pre-pandemic baseline of going into an office five days a week “is dead” for many workers. “Remote work is here to stay,” he said.

Bunker himself has been working remotely and recently celebrated his third anniversary of work from home (WFH).

In the course of talking about remote work today, I realized that today is my 3rd anniversary of going fully WFH!

— Nick Bunker (@nick_bunker) March 3, 2023

Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, who researched remote work for two decades, told the publication that in 2019, about 5 percent of full-time work was done from home. The share increased to more than 60 percent during the early days of the Covid pandemic -- April and May 2020.

That’s equivalent to almost 40 years of pre-pandemic growth virtually overnight, Bloom's research stated.

"The share of remote work has steadily declined to about 27 percent today but is likely to stabilise around 25 percent — a fivefold increase relative to 2019," Bloom said.

“That’s huge. It’s almost impossible to find anything in economics that changes at such speed, that goes up by 500 percent,” he told CNBC.

Read more: Over 40% of people with desk jobs feel burned out at work: Survey

Although remote work was seen as a necessary measure to contain the spread of the virus, both employees and companies subsequently discovered benefits beyond an immediate health impact, economists said.

Employees enjoy having a reduced commute, spending less time getting ready for work, and having a flexible schedule that more easily allows for doctor visits and picking up kids from school, Bloom said. Some workers have shown they’re reluctant to relinquish those perks.

Companies such as Amazon and Starbucks, which announced a stricter return-to-office policy, faced a backlash from employees.

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.

Read more: Over 40% of companies plan to increase remote working hires: Report

Pointing out the advantages for employers with staff that work remote, Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, told CNBC that companies enjoy higher employee retention and can recruit from a broader pool of applicants.

In a recent ⁦⁦@ZipRecruiter⁩ survey, 71% of job seekers ranked cost savings from commuting as the most important benefit to them of remote work. ⁦@ModeledBehavior⁩’s calculations show why this has been such a boon. https://t.co/Tg7PbIQa0w

— Julia Pollak (@juliaonjobs) August 28, 2020

They can save money on office space, by recruiting from lower-cost areas of the country or by raising wages at a slower pace due to workers’ perceived value of the work-at-home benefit, she told the publication.

For example, in a survey conducted by ZipRecruiter, job seekers said they’d be prepared to take a 14 percent pay cut to work remotely, on average, while those with young children agreed to even a 20 percent pay cut.

“The benefits for employers are pretty substantial,” Pollak said.

Read more: Unacademy CEO's advice to founders: ‘Ban remote work’