Posted on 12/13/2021 3:25:27 PM PST by Vendome
Nearly half of Bay Area employers expect employees to work in person on three days a week post-pandemic, a market shift that could result in roughly 1.1 million fewer commute trips per day...
The survey, conducted monthly since April, found that an average of 40.75% of Bay Area employers surveyed expect their workers to return to the office three days a week once the pandemic subsides.
Around 15% to 20% of employers said they expect their workers to return to in-person work five or more days per week while less than 5% of employers said they thought their employees would only work remotely post-pandemic.
Between one-quarter and one-third of employers who responded to the survey in October and November also said that, for now, they expect their employees to work from home full-time.
"We are at a pivotal moment for Bay Area transportation — if more and more people continue to drive by car to get around as we are seeing them do now, once we reach the new post-pandemic norm for in office work, Bay Area traffic will hit levels we've never seen before," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mv-voice.com ...
Still rush hour ain't as bad as it used to be...
A 40% wage increase wouldn’t be enough for me to move back to the Bay Area.
Many other high tech workers are saying the same thing.
In person in that sewer?
Were we born too soon?
Lots of government socialist cash heading out, not much in the way of actual work being done, people acting retired in their early thirties.
What did we all work for all these years?
So, the bay area workers have a 40% reduced chance of getting that smelly Pelosistuff on their shoes, getting mugged, or haveing their car robbed. Good for them.
This seems to be the minimum days per week in the office for tech companies that will take hold post pandemic.
Another change is the hiring of entirely remote workers. Pre pandemic, would not have even been considered. Now, with Teams,Zoom, etc., it can work.
I sure wish that I could get back the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars worth of gas and cars I went through in my career!
bookmark
Since I’m a consultant I keep my ear to the ground about the market. I just talked to another headhunter today. We both agreed that for the financial services industry at least, we are never going back to the way it was before the pandemic.
He is based in the bay area and previously used to look for talent in that area. Now that everything is remote he is looking nationwide and said he was just amazed at how much more/better the talent he could get is than what he was previously getting. I told him neither I nor any of my colleagues ever wants to go back to the office. Companies that offer 100% remote get first pick of the people they want. Ones which don’t get the bottom of the barrel....and those folks look for the first opportunity to get out.
Once managers come to accept that they are not going to be able to walk down the row of cubes and stand over people’s shoulders anymore, companies will be delighted to get rid of a lot of expensive office space.
I have not even met my last 3 bosses in person including my current one. Its worked just fine.
We moved out of CA two years ago after the company I worked for was sold. My boss gave me a soft landing and let me work remotely from North Idaho during the closing since he knew I wanted out of the Bay Area. I was fortunate to then find a local job in my field and my wife started a very successful business here. I’ll never go back and fortunately won’t have to for work even if I lost my job.
However, most of the people I’ve seen moving here in the past 12-18 months fall into two categories: 1) retirees (many of them on CALPERS...another long term issue) and 2) young professionals that work remotely for California companies. In both cases it has driven the housing market up considerably to levels that cannot be supported by the local economy.
The problem is that employers are discovering that, by letting workers work wherever they want, the companies have created significant tax liabilities (income, wage, disability, etc.) in jurisdictions that they never considered. At some point you are going to see companies retract the remote work thing because they don’t want to pay taxes in several dozen states, especially those where they have no physical presence other than a few employees.
Also, companies that want to downsize are going to use the distance incentive excuse to avoid WARN notices. The way it works is a company decides that it wants to lay off a bunch of people without notice requirements so it tells everyone “Hey, you can continue to work remotely but you have to be within 30 miles of a company location.” People unable to comply are then terminated for cause and not subject to WARN. This exact scenario happened to a large semiconductor company that used to allow remote work pre-Covid. I predict that you will now see it on a massive scale nationwide.
Most people think they’ll get another remote position if that happens, but the remaining remote positions will now have a national pool of applicants...it’s going to be difficult for all but the most in demand to get a new cushy “remote” job. The net result will be a crash of the local housing market as people struggle to find work and are forced to fire sale/leave when they can’t get another remote job.
All of this rambling is really to say that many people who say they will never go back are going to forced to. This “new normal” ain’t going to remain normal for very long. It’s going to financially ruin a lot of people.
Hahaha!
There isn’t going to be any stinking “post-pandemic” for all you useless eaters.
There are a lot of people who are never going back because they can't afford to. For decades now, younger folks can't afford to live in the towns they grew up in due to the tax burden. Employers were faced with a dwindling pool of nearby talent.
Now that most industries have caught up with industries that went remote years ago, there's an incentive to hire employees who live in an area with a lower cost of living. It's the employees who still live near the urban areas that are pricing themselves of their own job compared to their peers in areas with a lower cost of living.
Instead of outsourcing to India, they're outsourcing to small-town America. I've dealt with IT support in the Ohio valley, upstate New York, and the Carolinas who all work remotely for the same company.
I start my 1/3 days today, it is kinda good to see some old friends ..
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