U.S. workers have failed to return to the office in greater numbers this month, frustrating hopes that the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines and falling infection rates would start to lure employees back and help revitalize city economies.
I'm just spitballing here, but maybe this is because the vast bulk of vaccinations have gone to people over age 65?
and the majority of the fully vaccinated people so far probably were not working from home in the first place.
Of course because the authorities mostly have tried to prioritize "front line workers" as the only under 65 group getting vaccines.
OMG is the WSJ really that stupid? I've been told by my leadership no way no how is everyone sardining back into the office while there's still outbreaks happening among the staff that is mission critical on-site. And apparently even after most of us are able to be vaccinated the plan is only one day a week at most on-site as we're doing our jobs very well at home.
Apparently congress is noticing this and hoping the government can save a ton of $$$ by reducing the square foot of office space needed by the US government.
Pennywise, poundfoolish.
We cannot WFH all things for all time.
The short term stimulus of sale proceeds on federal office space will be dwarfed by the cost of requiring office space in the next five to t we n years
*ten not t we n
You'd be surprised. The DOD has successfully digitized budgeting, accounting and acquisition, I'm assuming most other Departments have as well. Sure you're still going to have guys in the SCIFs and maintenance buys keeping the jets flying, the pilots piloting etc. but just having It's no longer pieces of paper, it's digital systems with digital signatures.
Even before COVID-19 office space needs were shrinking as digitizing eliminated the need for filing space. I predict that a lot of office space will pivot to training space, meeting space and hoteling space but far more socially distant than the sardine open office my agency had us in last winter.
You must have been one of those micromanaging if I can't see you, you aren't working type of bosses. SIGH.
I’ve been telecommuting since 2005. I work for two Fortune 500 companies Since then. It was one of my conditions before accepting my current position. Not everyone can do it, but seems to me, most of my office does not need to be in an office.
I recognize not everyone is able to or as fortunate as I have been
I agree both WFH isn’t very good for most things. Also, as someone who has done both, I very much prefer the socializing of the in person office.
On the other hand, there’s virtually no place in this country where it’s safe to reopen indoor anything that takes more than about 20 minutes (wearing a mask). The most obvious example was the Trump White House which featured regular indoors super spreader events. Maybe in New Zealand or Oz or South Korea but not here.
Here, indoors is a potential death trap. It’s basically Russian roulette. If there’s nobody contagious it’s all good; but if there’s someone who transmits the virus, people are really screwed.
Most? I think a lot of folks don't realize how many jobs don't require in person presence to be done successfully. My team successfully went from 1 day a week telework to 100% telework in March 2020 with daily team meeting of about 30 minutes or less where the boss communicates any need to know info and we get a chance to communicate to the boss anything he needs to know. We also make sure to end the meeting with less formal conversations like being supportive of my boss after knee surgery and his parents getting COVID and silly stuff like gardening tips or home repair advice.
I think in the long run, organizations run on relationships and networking. And, for most people, coworkers supply a huge amount of the social contact that is necessary for the human animal to have good mental health. My experience is that over time people like myself who work from home have real problems of isolation.
I know that the bean counters (and many others) in California government are noticing the same thing. I think the word of the year for 2021 will be hotelling -- people won't have their own offices or cubicles anymore. Office space will turn into hotel space that you use your one or two days in and then used by somebody else the rest of the week.
Might also be because the "rollout of Covid-19 vaccines and falling infection rates" have both barely begun, regardless of the demographics.
If your hopes are already frustrated, the pandemic hasn't taught you any patience.
If everyone ends up permanently working at home or in some more distributed way, what will that do to local economies?
There will be less going out for lunch, less popping in to a convenience store on the way home, less retail of everything.
It will be different retail for sure. I've popped out at lunchtime, say to get my car's battery replaced. I've got out after work to pickup a prescription at the drug store and I've made runs to the local Total Wine and More at off times to stock up on beer and wine when the store is empty as it's a lot harder to get delivery on those items.
Already one local 1970s strip mall by me that was a success in the 1990s through the last decade is throwing in the towel - some of the bigger stores there are struggling in the economy but those that aren't are getting kicked out by the landlord who wants to tear it all down and build a multi use complex, apartments with stores at the bottom. Yikes the apartments on one side will overlook a tank farm.
Not necessarily. I worked from home when most of my teammates were in San Jose back in the late aughts. Going out for lunch was a near necessity for me in order to have some actual social contact.
The last 4-5 years before I retired in 2018 I was working almost exclusively from home (went I wasn't working alone in the computer lab in our almost completely empty office floor in Bellevue, WA). My teammates were in MA, CA, TX, and Shanghai.
For what it's worth, the market in remote meeting jokes is very healthy. In fact, I just read an online comic set a couple of centuries in the future. The technology by then provided very realistic 3-D holograms for avatars and presentation materials, but the starting dialogue was pretty familiar:
Everyone here?
Hello
Can you guys hear me?
Hello?
etc...
My boss is thinking the "new normal" will include team building events at local restaurants or picnics in the summer. What my team does clearly can be done via telework except for some of the training we do but even that is going pretty well via skype. Right now we are all still geographically located near the agency where our cubes sit empty.
I've already read at least a couple of articles about serious problems in commercial real estate.
Demand for big office buildings and office suites has cratered and is not likely to return to normal very soon, and it may never completely return - especially if we start getting more "Black Swan" events. And, according to an article at ScienceDirect.com, climate change is causing movements of animal populations (including bats) that result in their diseases ALSO migrating, pretty much guaranteeing new mixes and outbreaks.
"Demand for big office buildings and office suites has cratered and is not likely to return to normal very soon"
On the upside, this will be a kick in the old arse that the Senate Republicans refused to deliver to Mr Trump, private citizen. Yes, I'm still bitter.
Wolf Richter has some interesting takes on the commercial property space: https://wolfstreet.com/category/all/commercial-property/
We still go out to lunch. Why would being home change that? I can't keep all the ingredients for every type of sandwich I might want on hand. And getting out into the sun is good.
Good comments, all. Wishing WordPress had ‘Likes’. Or even ‘Respects’.
Like.
“Respects”
In WA we're supposedly up to 280+K who have received both doses and a bit over 589K who have only received the first dose (as of either Friday or Saturday evening).
Only 6 million (minus those who can't receive it for various reasons) to go. WA did not do a good job - they tried to run a distributed program with no real coordination or assistance for counties or cities, and the tracking was fragmented and late. (Sound familiar? Kind of like a tRump mole was running things. Big article in the Seattle Times on that this morning.) Didn't even mobilize the WA National Guard until recently. States that got it together, including mobilizing their FEMA equivalents and/or the NG are way ahead of us.
Virginia has plans to ramp up vaccine sites but has held off because they are not getting enough vaccine doses. They had to pull back plans to expand to the 65-75 plus at risk folks but they when ahead with a waiting list so folks who signed up a month ago are just now getting appointments.
The Governor along with Maryland and DC are begging Biden to set up mass vaccine sites for federal workers. Can't hurt to ask, it would be a good idea actually but until there's enough doses it can't happen.
Vaccinating BIG GOVERNMENT GOONS & OTHER RIFFRAFF before other people will be only slightly less offensive to the FOXnews audience than vaccinating Guantanamo detainees.
Fuck Fox News, their opinion doesn't matter. I'm NOT riffraff, not a goon nor are my thousands of colleagues. What is highly offensive is folks claiming to be patriots who are all to eager to commit insurrection and trash government facilities.
We need a functioning government now more than ever. Keeping the worker bees safe is part of that.
Agreed.
But I don't see Biden, already beset by CC-gate & the staffer w/ stage 4 cancer who gave some POLITICO jagoff the ol' what-for, wanting to blow political capital on express vaccination for functionaries at HUD & Commerce, & such.
Again, we're not functionaries, we're ordinary people who are working jobs at less pay than the private sector for a cause we believe in. And there's no f'en gate in the Biden Admin, just one cranky staffer. Geez you are so deluded.
For those who've seen the second season of The Boys,
Ted Cruz is now sporting the Stormfront look,
https://twitter.com/BobsBurgersJon/status/1360636229503438852
Re: Ted Cruz
For a moment, he actually managed to look somewhat cool in that new beard, and even better, it hid his smarmy face. I guess now it's back to Square One. That hair "look" is really sad.
It took him six months to grow that beard and it looked like it was actually trying to avoid covering the chin until it absolutely had to, accentuating the feebleness of it all in the most awful way.
I'd say it is because the wast bulk has not arrived yet. We are in the low single digits percent of the population--plus these vaccinated people are either essential workers or old--not office workers.
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to raise the question why workers don't return to work BEFORE they had a chance at a shot.
Yeah wish there were like buttons. You are on the mark Azumbrunn.
So what's the step from "work from home" to white collar "gig worker"?
Stonks.
Haven't a ton of workers already been gigged pre-Covid? I'm thinking that it's already happened so there won't be a ton more. My job was originally held by a contractor but the agency decided they needed a core of civilian billets to be the SMEs for each segment of the system we supported with additional contractor support as needed from year to year.
My pet theory about gig work is that on the mythical day we fix our broken healthcare system the motivation to push workers to gig work will go away a lot.
We've had more people die of Covid-19 since Biden's been elected than ever died under Trump! Why isn't Biden doing more???
/s
You say that's snark, but there was some nut on tv going on about just that yesterday.
Biden's primary campaign indicated as early as September or October 2019 that his regime would do better against a pandemic than Trump's.
That promise isn't looking so hot.
Monty, apparently you are calendar-challenged.
You don’t start counting the time in office beginning with election day. President Biden has been in office less than 4 weeks. It would probably take even Superman working together with a reformed Lex Luthor more time than that to straighten out the screwed up fiasco he inherited.
Meanwhile, of course, he is already doing better than his predecessor, who holds the world record for the highest negative net value of any chief executive in the recorded history of the human race.
I would never trust Luthor. He has no moral core.
Sidenote: People dying from COVID19 today would have been infected between new years and mlk day.
Yeah, my 80+ year old parents got vaccinated, so it's really puzzling why my office hasn't thrown open its doors.
Oh, I see. WE've failed. Got it.
Well, that's one of the more idiotic things I've seen. Apparently, the WSJ hasn't heard. People aren't going back to work anytime soon in any significant numbers. Why? First, most large employers have told their employees to not plan on returning until this summer if not until 2022. I worked for the State of California and, almost universally, what I'm hearing is that state employees will be working at home for some time. I've also heard much the same from people in the private sector. Second, because employers have figured out they get the same productivity (if not more) at a fraction of the cost. The idea of having 100% (or close to it) of the workforce working in offices may very well be a thing of the past.
I worked for the State of California for 32 years. It is impossible for me to imagine I could have learned how to do my jobs properly without interacting with my fellow employees. Even after many years there were always new things to learn and techniques used by others that I was able to incorporate in to the way I did things. I suppose there are some jobs where it doesn’t matter whether or not you work in an office but I never worked in one of those jobs.
I retired a year ago. Just before this all started. I worked as an attorney and so much of my job was about in-person interactions. Always having an open door and having random conversations here, there, and everywhere. I have said for the past year that I have no idea how I would have done my job working from home. Well ... I’m about to find out. Just started working as a retired annuitant. And it’s all from home. Two weeks in, it’s okay, but not how I like to do my job.
There is a certain component of work that instills a sort of "community" within work groups call it socio-employment. For cube workers it was as simple as leaning back in your chair looking at the person next to you and saying "how's the kids"? Or, "how would you have handled my last call"?
Will commercial RE crater? Demand is off for sure but demand for internet access at speeds to accommodate large business files is also up. I think in the long run we will have high speed internet access throughout this country but then we become susceptible to hacking. At least in an office you had banks of servers and modems overseen by employees of that company's IT dept. Now it's looked after by some WFH techie from Spectrum and a guy from IT.
I'm glad I'm retired. I could not stand to work at home. The drive to and from work was in many instances cathartic, making home time more enjoyable. From what I've seen of my WFH neighbors - the WFH went from the initial "hey this is great" to "I need to go back" - in a hurry
Privileged worker here. I'm not planning to go back, or at least I am mentally preparing for the possibility that it will never again be possible to trust random strangers breathing in the same room. Are you not wearing a mask because you're immune, or because you're a cult member? We won't be able to tell.
My prediction is that the anti vaxxers will screw the rest of us permanently. We will not reach herd immunity even with adequate supplies.
Unequal distribution of the vaccines will cause mutations to spring up in the under developed world that eventually defeat our vaccines.
It will be a flu like arms race with a disease that we have zero longitudinal data on, and lots of anecdotes of long haul symptoms.
We had better hope the technologists can bring us new kinds of telepresence to recapture some of what has been lost.
I'm inclined to agree with your predictions alas. I'm in my fifties so I do not want to go back to the office but for unique circumstances like renewing security credentials and replacing my aging work laptop.
There you go again! -- Trying to confuse us with facts.
Lol. Yeah, not only are most vaccines going to health care workers, nursing home patients, and people over 65, most people who've gotten their first shot haven't even gotten the second one yet, and it takes a couple of weeks after that to be fully protected. At the rate things are going in most states, the general population probably won't be fully vaccinated until very late this spring or even into the summer. If office work ever does return to normal, we probably won't know until the fall, which is the earliest schools can probably be fully operational again as well.
I've been WFH since 2002, but my wife's company is giving people the option to come back only if they want or for team meetings. They are going to save close to $1M on office space. Only the young and/or single are planning on going back full time. Those that don't care for the office social scene most likely won't.
I wouldn't be surprised to see commercial realty holding companies and developers starting to lobby the government to make WFH illegal or at least difficult in some way. Cities are going to need to make up some revenue as well. I wonder which Blue state will be the first to adopt a WFH tax.
My city is as blue as a summer sky - but the entire city council is in the pocket of RE developers. So it will be interesting to see.