The era of bosses demanding in-office attendance for a set number of days each week may be on the wane, according to market and human resources experts. And workers appear to be taking advantage, with a growing share spending some of their work schedule at home.
The latest hint that employers are softening their stance on in-office work and that workers remain attached to hybrid work schedules emerged in the August jobs report, released last week. In a portion of the report asking households about their employment status, Bureau of Labor Statistics researchers have been asking about telework, or work at home for pay.
In August, 22.8% of people said they teleworked for some or all of their jobs, up from 19.5% the same month a year earlier. The share of workers who teleworked for some of the time climbed to 11.7%, up from 9.2%. And the share of people who worked from home all the time increased to 11.1%, up from 10.3%.
The uptick in workers staying out of the office comes even as the labor market has cooled and employers are showing signs that they’ve regained the upper hand. Gone are the days when workers' demands ran the show. But throughout 2024, larger shares of workers have reported that they're working remotely at least some of the time, and the August jobs report continued that trend.
Looking at 2024 as a whole so far, around 23% of workers say they have teleworked for all or some of the time in their job schedule. That's up from roughly 19% throughout 2023, the numbers show.
There are still strict employers out there, said Ravin Jesuthasan, a senior partner at the human-resources consulting firm Mercer, where he advises employers and researches the future of work. Still, he said, "I think what you are starting to see is the settling into some new level of rationality."
'There's got to be some level of flexibility'
The year-over-year increase in remote work isn't huge, but it runs counter to the narrative of a slow and steady post-pandemic return to the office, where bosses keep clawing back more in-office days from employees.
It was one thing for bosses to announce ironclad rules about the number of days employees were required to be in the office. But it's been another matter trying to enforce those requirements, Jesuthasan said.
"It is incredibly hard to police this," he said. "It's incredibly hard to ensure compliance."
Companies seem to have struck a balance in which in-office expectations are looser and implied, while workers and managers share more of an understanding about why people need to be together on certain days, rather than hitting a quota for its own sake, he added.
"I'm not seeing the explicit backing-off of mandates," he said. "In multiple instances, the mandate is not being enforced. … It's a lot more implied, I would say, than any decree."
This spring, two of Jesuthasan's client businesses — one in financial services and another in manufacturing — quietly stopped trying to enforce their in-office attendance rules. Company brass thought the initial worker backlash to requiring time in the office would go away, "but the noise level just kept getting ratcheted up," he said.
The return-to-office rules had become a distraction because managers were spending too much time re-explaining policies and dealing with individual exceptions, he said.
Strict requirements haven't been easy for employers that are hungry to keep talented workers, said Michael Steinitz, senior executive director of professional talent solutions at Robert Half, a staffing company working with employers and job seekers.
"It was almost as if employers wanted to make a statement with these mandates and to see where it landed," he said. "The market responded pretty aggressively — that people are willing to come to the office, but there's got to be some level of flexibility."
Robert Half is seeing more job postings for hybrid roles than it did last year, he noted. If the ability to work from home is crucial for a job seeker, they should prioritize that over the negotiation of other perks and benefits, he said.
"A job seeker might be willing to take less in terms of salary to gain that flexibility," he said. "It's a give-and-take situation, and I think we'll be seeing more of these types of negotiations."
Nearly half (45%) of human resources professionals working for businesses with strong expectations of onsite attendance or outright requirements said they had problems keeping workers, according to a June survey from the Conference Board.
In contrast, when employers gave workers leeway about where they worked, 15% of human resources professionals reported difficulties retaining workers, the survey said.
Employers 'continue to feel like it's better together'
To be sure, it's difficult to nail down the full extent of remote work compared with office attendance. The BLS numbers are just one dataset.
A long-running look at office occupancy from Kastle Systems, a security technology provider, shows an incremental march higher since 2021 with wide variations based on region and days of the week.
On Sept. 4, office occupancy across 10 U.S. cities was 2.6% higher than it was the Wednesday after Labor Day last year, Kastle data showed. There was a nearly 7% jump in major Texas cities and an almost 4% increase in the New York City area.
Kastle CEO Haniel Lynn said his data and anecdotes from employers don't suggest a retreat from in-person work.
Employers "continue to feel like it's better together; there's better community and better engagement if you are working together," he said. Some employers are checking building-access data to determine who's really showing up, Lynn noted.
"Especially where the economy stands right now, there's probably some more conviction across companies to enforce policies they put in place," he said.
Last week, the weekly average for office occupancy was 49.3% of pre-pandemic levels, up from 48.5% a week earlier, according to Kastle data. The high point was Sept. 4, with office occupancy averaging 59.5%.
Some business leaders may be using a slowing economy and job market as fuel to enforce office-attendance rules, Jesuthasan said. "But my personal sense is [that] your average CEO, he or she has much bigger fish to fry."
Stanford University economist Nick Bloom, a leading researcher on remote work, said he has been expecting an eventual shift back to more at-home work after the post-pandemic call to return to the office.
Technology is improving, and younger companies with younger workers are more supportive of a work arrangement that incorporates at least some work from home. It also takes time for office leases to expire, he said, and some employers may shed the cost of a physical workplace once their lease ends.
Bloom was ready for the shift to more at-home work to happen as soon as next year, going into 2026 and 2027. "There is definitely nothing preventing this, and indeed eventually [working from home] will rise," he said, but added that he was "surprised to see this so quickly."