Almost half of US employees telecommute

The latest Gallup poll of workers template in USA arrived a week ago with a definitive headline: “Remote work persists and tends to permanent & rdquor ;. The conclusion of the survey firm is based on figures such as that 45% of those workers continue teleworking (25% full time and 20% part time). And although many nuances must be used to describe the general panorama in the United States, the truth is that the changes imposed by the struggle to contain the coronavirus in many labor sectors and the transformation that this experience has brought about in the priorities of many workers seems to be here to stay.

Just look at federal government, which with 2.1 million workers is the largest employer in the US, to understand the new reality. Two weeks ago, as the threat of pandemic and of the delta variant and advancing vaccination, largely due to immunization mandates, the Administration of Joe Biden it lifted the restriction for government agencies that had limited the presence of officials at their facilities to 25%. The 20-page memo, however, included the design of a permanent plan to expand the remote work in the immediate future and potentially in the long term.

Something similar is happening in the private sector. The current situation of the pandemic and the Administration’s guidelines for companies with more than 100 employees to require the vaccination o Constant testing is allowing a gradual return to offices that has accelerated in recent weeks according to data from Kastle Systems, a company that measures the security cards used to enter businesses in 10 cities. That return is especially pronounced in places like New York in the finance sector.

Companies, however, are applying lessons on remote work learned in the pandemic and also adapting to workers who have appreciated flexibility and are leaving or threatening to leave inflexible positions. Many do not plan full openings of their Offices until the end of the year or the beginning of next year (such as Apple O Google), some like Microsoft They have directly postponed that reopening indefinitely and there are cases of those who are going to allow part of their staff to continue teleworking (40,000 employees in the case of Pricewaterhouse Coopers), adopting a hybrid model (such as the one proposed) or implementing more flexible hours . Even companies like Goldman Sachs O JP Morgan that initially enacted the return to the office five days have backtracked, moving closer to the will of the workers and avoiding the flight to rivals in the sector more generous with remote work.

Telecommuting, a question of class

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Like everything in the US, the situation of telecommuting It must be analyzed not only according to regional differences, especially significant in the case of the current impact of the virus, but also and especially, with two essential filters to address any issue in the country. One is that of the endemic and growing inequality, and under that it is seen that the telecommuting options, which never existed for essential workers, have also been practically nil for many of the employees in the lowest paid positions. 79% of those blue collar workers had already returned to their jobs in person in March while 67% of the higher paid white collar workers continue to work fully or partially remotely according to the recent Gallup poll.

The other filter is that of the deep and also sharpened political divisionAnd the remote work issue is also seen from a partisan perspective, with Democrats broadly open to easing and Republicans betting on a return to the pre-pandemic model.