Do you remember when COVID hit and your boss told you to try and work from home? Unless you were classified as an “essential worker”, you either worked at home, or you didn’t work at all.
I didn’t really feel like it, but I was classified and as essential worker. Most of the people in our office did work at home, but I, along with a few others, still came into the office every day. I was actually given the option of putting in the necessary hardware and software to work at home, but I declined because I didn’t have a reliable internet connection at that time.
Many people who were originally forced to work at home found that they liked it and wanted to stay there after the COVID emergency was over. Some businesses, Tesla, for example, immediately required their remote workers to come back to the office. Other businesses continue to let people work remotely several days a week.
Some interesting statistics are now popping up about the number of remote workers in Washington and across the United States and those remote workers seem to be thriving.
According to axios.com,
‘The CEOs lost this one: New government data shows that 35% of U.S. workers did some or all of their work at home last year — significantly higher than in the previous decade.
Despite the best efforts of many prominent executives and leaders, we live in a hybrid work world, with more people doing their jobs remotely, and that’s led to big societal change.’
At the start of the pandemic in 2019, the percentage of remote workers was approximately 24%. By 2022 that percentage was up to 34% and that number has held pretty much steady ever since.
Who works remotely?
One of the interesting statistics about remote workers is the breakdown by education.
About 9% of all remote workers in the United States have less than a high school education. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 57% of remote workers have an advanced degree.
One downside in my opinion to remote working is social isolation. You don’t get to interact with your coworkers in person. It’s easy to lose any sense of community at a FaceTime meeting. A paper that was recently published in “Science” States that “remote work explains about a third of the deterioration in mental health between 2011 and 2024, excluding the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.”
It seems like people that work in offices really want to work remotely, but they don’t necessarily consider the cost of potential isolation from their coworkers.
In years past I have done some work at home and the one thing that I found is that I have very little self-discipline. I’m not sure if my productivity would be that good if I worked at home.
At this point in my life, the only reason I would like to work at home is that I wouldn’t have to wear pants.
These Photos of ’80s Office Life Will Take You Back
Miss it or not, life in the ’80s office was buzzing with machines, shoulder pads, and face-to-face drama long before email and smartphones — do these photos take you back?
Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz