A few weeks ago, the Economist gravely announced that people working at home were less productive than people who commuted to a workplace. I didn’t find its evidence persuasive, however, as the studies it cited mostly dealt with low-skilled jobs such as call centers and data entry.
Click image to download a 17.4-MB PDF of this report from the McKinsey Institute.
Yesterday, the Hill reported just the opposite: telecommuting, a new study has shown, increases worker output. This is partly because remote workers save a lot of time by not having to commute, and they tend to spend almost half of that time working. The article also pointed out that overall worker productivity is higher now than before the pandemic, and telecommuting is one of the factors increasing that productivity.
Almost 18 percent of U.S. employees worked at home in 2021, up from less than 6 percent in 2019. One organization, Upwork, has predicted< this will increase to 22 percent by 2025. While some employers think that unsupervised workers are less productive, most agree that a combination of less time spent commuting, fewer unproductive meetings, and more flexible schedules can increase productivity in many fields.
A McKinsey report released two weeks ago found that “office attendance has stabilized at 30 percent below prepandemic norms” and nearly two-thirds of those still going to offices were doing so only a few days a week. As a result, the report estimated that worldwide office values would decline by $800 billion. That’s a lot, but it’s a lot less than the trillions of dollars in losses in the U.S. alone that was shrilly predicted by someone named George Sibble a few weeks ago.
City officials dismayed by the loss of downtown jobs are still talking about converting offices to housing. However, this is an expensive proposition. It would cost a lot less (and produce more desirable housing) to simply build new single-family homes, but in most coastal cities that means rezoning rural land for new development. That’s not going to happen anytime soon, but anyone who expects that turning a bank tower into residences will solve the housing affordability problem is deluded.
Working from home is far too lenient. “Overtime is a big issue for transit agencies. Many transit employees, from bus drivers to train conductors to maintenance workers, significantly boost their incomes by working overtime.” By clocking in, and doing ….. whatever.
Remember 2017 Obama era Government SHutdown…. 450,000 non-essential government workers were furloughed. Media whined. Open air public facilities were “Closed”…. Despite this. If they’re Non-essential, fire em and get private contractors. At the Height of Pandemic Government workers got FULL pay, FULL coverage, benefits and Stimulus checks…. EVen with NOTHING to do.
In ones mind The apartment/home is a place to decompress and relax from work. Not a place to get work done. Having a separate environment outside of home to get work done allows you to relax at home. With WFH all the stress of work stay with you.
lot of people, including myself, don’t have space for a dedicated office space in their home. Despite the whole grand scale concept of Paperless office, even today PAPER adds up. Even with computers, document and work storage eats up significant space. So a lot of bedrooms or living rooms became offices. Places where you relax or have fun became places where you also stressed and worked. This impacted ones ability to relax. Plus compared to businesses; internet problems persist. Dog is barking. Kids are yelling.
study by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly two-thirds of people who spend at least some time working from home say they’ve felt isolated or lonely from time to time. For 17%, that’s a constant feeling.
Working from home has made you occupied 24/7. No reason you cant call out….
Another thing is Centralized office or satellite is efficient in a sense transporation comes to it.
In work from home situation, transporation may not be needed but still essential because now physical resources have to be delivered to you. Also where you shop/eat/venture recreation that was once close to office is now distant. Far from decreasing trips by car, it can accelerate it and exacerbate it because they stuck at home make splurge decisions.
Working from home sucks, it’s tedious and more so your work demands your attention 24 hours a day. Watch the movie “Office Space” now imagine that in your home……….. *Shudder
Working from home is really for people who work for themselves, or entrepeneurs running home business.
Change is hard. Hardest, it seems, for “City Officials.”
I’m curious, where is this rural land in Boston, NYC, Washington DC, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego that the AP is talking about. The last time I checked all of these Cities are pretty much built out and there isn’t any rural land within their city boundaries to build these single family homes.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area and you are correct that the only vacant land in the city limits are parks, some of which are quite large. However, there is a lot of developable land pretty near San Francisco. Legally, it may not be open to development because it is designated open space, not zoned correctly etc. but that is a policy decision, not an innate quality of the land.
My issue is that AP states that “cities” are trying to convert vacant office space to residential units but then states that they should instead develop rural areas to SFH, knowing that these rural areas are outside City limits. AP is intentionally conflating cities with suburban and exurban policies when one has no legal authority over the other.
@sketter,
In many jurisdictions, cities help with the creation of business improvement district which are eventually annexed by the cities. In fact, Texas law, for example, requires that these districts, called municipal Utility District, be annexed in their entirety.
To elaborate: most new suburbs are built using improvement districts, created by developers, that are usually in unincorporated land. A utility company from the county or city builds out the utilities, then charges the developer (the district in this case). In many cases, the suburbs is eventually annex. I think Texas alone has ~1700 MUDs.
Specifically with “Coastal City” has done that since that’s specifically what “Cities” the AP is referring to.
@Sketter,
@Antiplanner is suggesting that coastal cities do it instead of apartment conversions. San Diego has several improvement districts, example being Rancho Bernardo and Scripps Ranch.
https://www.sandiego.gov/economic-development/about/bids
The Bay Area, on the other hand, has growth boundaries, preventing it from occurring. But California has a lot more regulations regarding suburban development compared to other states. They’re even considering capping HOA fees.
Nonetheless, its certainly possible for city utility companies to help develop unincorporated land even if the city chooses not to annexed the development.
So what I hear is that city’s should annex land from rural or exurban counties then build SFHs on them.
Has anyone talked commercial versus residential $$$$$$$$$$ for the cities?
Residential property tax is typically half that of a same value commercial building.
Were a commercial building had a worker for every 200 sq ft, residential maybe has 1 for every 1000. Or, as we can see w/ one project,
A historic downtown Minneapolis office tower will soon be converted into housing.
Real estate developer Sherman Associates announced Tuesday that it has closed on a $91 million purchase of Northstar Center East in downtown Minneapolis. The company plans to turn the 13-story office tower into 216 apartments. A building that once hosted a 1,000+ workers a day will house 300 or so.
What does that do for all those retail businesses downtown and those _jobs_ and those _tax revenues?
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-business/downtown-minneapolis-northstar-center-east-office-tower-bought-for-apartment-conversion
The 329,000-square-foot office tower, which was mostly vacant before Sherman Associates’ purchase, will be one of the first office-to-apartment conversions since the pandemic began.
i guess only some jobs can be done from the home….many need to be ‘on site’. in NC decades back large textile or furniture mills had company housing nearby for employees. if a ‘scraper can be converted to a live/work type of structure….with supporting retail a few stories down at the bottom or a block or so away maybe that can solve city core vacancy issues.