One of the big questions that had remained to be resolved in these years of the coronavirus pandemic was whether the trend towards teleworking, which by necessity skyrocketed during the hardest months of mandatory confinement, was a transitory phenomenon or a more permanent change. within companies and among the workforce.
Although the definitive answer is still under construction and depends largely on the statistics compiled by various government agencies, a series of new studies and surveys already point to a new reality that seems irrefutable: telecommuting is here to stay and it is causing profound economic and demographic disruption in the United States.
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According to a new report by three prestigious economists -José María Barrero, from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico; Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University; and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago – at least a third of all employees in the country are currently working remotely.
The results, according to the authors, are very conclusive, since it is a figure that has stabilized at this point for almost a year and a half (between January 2021 and July of the present). Moment that also coincides with the economic reopening and the kind of normality that began to settle once the vaccines appeared to contain the advance of the deadly disease.
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Although that number is equivalent to only half of the workforce that worked remotely in the worst months of the pandemic, when more than two-thirds of Americans worked from home, it represents an impressive increase compared to the numbers that were recorded before covid invaded the planet.
According to a report by the National Council for Compensation (NCCI), a body founded in 1923 and that monitors the labor flow in the US, before the coronavirus, only 6 percent of Americans worked as remote. That is, since then the trend has grown by at least 400 percent.
In fact, according to the NCCI, before covid-19 only one in four Americans had experimented with some form of telecommuting in their working life.
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Both reports coincide with surveys that Gallup has carried out to measure the phenomenon. In the latest sample, 29 percent of people indicated that they were working remotely full-time.
If we add to that figure the people who manage a hybrid employment scheme, that is, some days from home and others in the office, the percentage rises to more than 40 percent of the entire workforce.
The same authors of the study, who consulted official statistics and various industries to reach their conclusions, acknowledge that not all sources agree when it comes to specifying the increase in the trend. Even so, Davis maintains, “there is no doubt that the increases that have been registered since 2019 are dramatic and that they will remain, from now on, at levels much higher than those of the pre-pandemic.”
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Another recent report on this very topic by the Washington Post also shows that, as expected, increases in remote work vary widely across different sectors of the economy.
For example, in the so-called “knowledge industries,” which include finance, technology, communications, and information, 3 out of every 5 working days today are done remotely or from home. In other words, in this sector, 60 percent of the working week is done from home.
But in other areas such as hotels and tourism, restaurants or transportation, the curve tips the other way. In these sectors, almost 80 percent of the work is done in person.
Still, says Liz Wilke, chief economist at Gusto, a company that monitors hiring patterns at more than 200,000 companies in the country, the trend toward telecommuting has become widespread. “All companies have had varying levels of exposure to remote work. But what is clear is that it is a universal trend. Each of them has seen some type of increase over the years,” says Wilke.
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Although the rise of teleworking has not been new for sectors such as technology, which were already moving in that direction, what is new now is that it has touched segments where it seemed impossible before.
In the Post story they cite the example of Inside Out Co., a company based in Chicago, Illinois, that is dedicated to the construction, painting and roofing of houses and apartments. Before the pandemic, work was 100 percent in-person, and limited to the Chicago area. Out of necessity, when lockdowns hit during the pandemic, they adjusted technology, started using the cloud for their data flow and storage, and accommodated the schedules of employees and the needs of those who had to care for their children. .
All companies have had varying levels of exposure to remote work. But what is clear is that it is a universal trend
“What we found is that people are more efficient when they work from home. Maybe because they no longer waste time commuting to the office, or because they can manage their time better and that causes them less stress. In addition, we we’ve been able to expand. We now have contracts in remote areas like Florida and Tennessee, and employees who work from anywhere in the country,” says Christie Mortimer, the company’s chief financial officer.
What we are experiencing, says Mortimer, is a whole labor revolution.
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The study by Barrero, Bloom and Davies also identifies the areas of the country where teleworking is most prevalent and which coincide with the most populous urban centers in the US. The list is headed by cities such as San Francisco, New York and Washington as well than others in northern Virginia that are attached to the US capital such as Alexandria and the counties of Fairfax, Falls Church and Arlington.
Likewise, areas where there are important scientific centers such as Los Alamos, in New Mexico and others near Atlanta, in Georgia.
“There are many workers in urban areas who are benefiting from this new concept because they no longer have to work from the heart of these same cities and are moving to nearby suburbs. Because they are cheaper, or because they can be closer of their families or because the money they earn gives them more money,” says Wilke.
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That, in addition, has unleashed another revolution in the country’s real estate market whose consequences are just beginning to be measured. Although there are still no official statistics or concrete measurements on the effect that this phenomenon is having on the economies of the big cities and those to which they are moving, what is clear is that the pandemic unleashed the displacement of thousands of people in the country. .
Something that can be specified, in a certain sense, with the increase or decrease in the value of real estate and rents.
Many workers in urban areas are benefiting from this new concept
To give an example, while the value of real estate in a city like Washington has stagnated, it has grown 10 percent in nearby suburbs and up to 15 percent among slightly more remote places.
And looked at by cities, they are the densely populated ones that offer the possibility of working remotely where the most displacement has occurred.
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New York, Washington DC and San Francisco, for example, also top the list of cities that lost between 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants in the last year.
Another study based on Census data and done by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) puts the numbers into even clearer perspective. Throughout the last decade, but especially in the last few years, there has been a great movement of the working-age population between the big cities and the suburbs. According to EIG, the number of counties in the country that have seen increases in this type of population has increased from 11 percent in 2011 to 56 percent in 2021.
Likewise, very rural states such as Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Colorado and Utah are registering historic increases in their population that are attributed in part to the pandemic, telecommuting and the displacement it has caused.
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“Population losses were highest in large urban centers, with a large number of jobs that could be done remotely, and where housing costs were high. Something very consistent with the idea that teleworking has been one of the engines most important in the demographic changes that the pandemic has caused,” says Adam Ozimek, chief economist at EIG.
As the authors highlight in the first study, the rise of telecommuting in the US and the demographic shift it has caused are undeniable facts. As well as the reasons behind this turn.
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Much more difficult to predict, at least for now, are the long-term effects that this phenomenon will have on the labor market, as well as on the economy and culture of large, medium and small cities. But, above all, in the human aspect and the interpersonal interrelationships that this profound earthquake that Americans have begun to experience supposes.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
Washington
On twitter @sergom68
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