Here I was thinking that it was because: (1) sewage runs downhill, and (2) higher elevations flood last. :-)
Productivity has suffered from being out of the office.
I have yet to see any definitive study that has determined this conclusively. I suspect there's a high degree of variation among industries for this. And a lot of it is based on how productivity is measured. A person working from home may complete less work in a defined period of time (hour, day, week, etc.) than one in the office, but I'll bet that any industry that could function for six weeks or longer with most of their staff working from home has found that these staff are far more productive when measured by the overhead costs of the company.
Any CEO with half a brain is surely looking at a laundry list of COST efficiencies that can be permanently established if most office staff are working from home.
1. Employees save a ton of commuting time and expense (at least in major cities).
2. Workers Compensation Insurance premiums will almost certainly be lower.
3. #MeToo issues will practically disappear. Heck, the HR department can be shrunk to 10% of its previous size.
4. Many employees will place a high value on the flexibility of their schedules that comes with working from home. The most remarkable example I can think of comes from one of my own clients. I've been working closely with him for more than a year now, and we have web meetings at least 2-3 times in an average week. Six months ago he moved to a small town 75 miles away from the city where his employer is located ... and I just learned about it last week. LOL.
Companies are going to sell off a lot of their expensive office space in city centers. A lot of those office towers will be converted to apartments. Commercial real estate will take a huge hit.
Expensive cities like San Francisco and New York will take a huge hit. Why live there? For lots of jobs there is simply no reason to.
Even less expensive cities will see a lot of professionals move to the suburbs or even exurbs. The more daring will move to small towns or the countryside.
The tax base of a lot of big cities will collapse.
Long term this is potentially devastating to Democrats. Their voters are almost all city dwellers dependent on public transport and/or other government services. As people move out and rely less on government services, they’re probably going to be more independent and less willing to pay for them.