4 minute read
THE TOPICS. Future of the bathrobe brigade
THE OFFICE – It’s always good to get back to work. Everything I need is right here. The temperature is exactly what I like. My type of music (bagpipe bands) is humming in the background and my co-workers don’t complain. Same for my ci gar smoke. But the com mute kills me. Down the hall, past the kitchen where I get my next cup of coffee, keep going through the din ing room and here to my of fice. That’s because I work at home, and so do millions of other Americans. This is not new, since the pandemic, but what is new is that experts who keep tally on such things say this change in Americans’ work habits appears to be permanent and our lives will never be the same. A generation from now people will say, “It all began in 2020.” Or maybe, “Grandad, did you really go to an office? What’s an office?”
U.S. Presidents get to work at home as do lighthouse keepers, shepherds and January 6th rioters under house arrest. So let’s look at this phenomenon which is unfolding before our very bloodshot eyes –you stayed up late because you didn’t have to set the alarm and get dressed, underwear and bathrobe are the uniform of the day. First, we are over the pandemic hump. Not many people wear a mask anymore. No more standing 6-feet apart. Theaters and ball parks are almost back to normal. The anti-vaxxers are dead. But have you noticed that doctors no longer work on Fridays? Landlords are frantic because their tenants don’t need that much office space. Drycleaners are going broke since office workers no longer dress up for work. Some restaurants have closed for good. Even today they can’t find enough employees. Your order is so slow your hot potato soup became vichyssoise. Blame Dr. Fauci. These matters have probably already changed your life. You may have worked from home since Covid-19 hit town and still do. More than a third of U.S. households report working from home more frequently than before the pandemic. (Before Covid-19 arrived just 5 percent of people worked at home. A huge change.) The switch depends widely on what you do for a living. Those who work from home more report higher income and education and better health than those wage slaves who didn’t change their work habits because
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Lynn Ashby
double the percentage (32.1 percent) of households with incomes between $50,000 and $74,999. The lowestearning households were less likely to switch to home work. Only 12.7 percent of households earning under $25,000 reported working from home instead of hitting the warehouse, the kitchen at Whataburger or paving Westheimer. Simply put, the boss is at home and her employees are at work on the job.
Here’s an odd finding by researchers: Stay-at-home workers like to spiff up their office. That makes sense. After spending most of their waking hours sitting in the basement at a computer or on the phone, they may get a new wastebasket, better lighting, turn their man cave into their old digs by putting in cubicles and a water cooler. On average, workers invested 15 hours of time and $560 to upgrade their work space. On top of those expenses by at-home workers is money spent by employers in cloud computing and other technology to deal with their remote workers. Also, there are entrepreneurs who have figured out a way to turn a buck on this new work force: The number of patents for technological innovations to accommodate the stay-athomes more than doubled from January to September 2020. Another finding: spending in city centers has already decreased. Many of the mom-and-pop sandwich shops in office buildings and the tunnels have gone broke, and that appears to be permanent.
OK, that’s where we are now. But where do we go from here? Number crunchers at the U.S. Census Bureau have studied the situation (probably from their homes) and have determined that up to 20 percent of the entire U.S. workforce will continue to work at home permanently. Just mull that over. One out of every five U.S. workers plans to avoid the 9-to-5 Monday-through-
Friday routine from here on. The other 80 percent are wary of mass transit, crowded elevators, and indoor dining. The researchers estimate that the drop in the number of commuters will result in a 5 to 10 percent drop in spending on meals, entertainment, and personal services in major city centers. That spending will be redirected to business establishments closer to workers’ homes. Then there is commuting which pops up time and again in the surveys. Commuters in New YorkNewark-Jersey City take 37.7 minutes to commute to work one-way each work day. That’s the longest. Next is the Washington, D.C. area at 35.6 minutes and the San Francisco region at 35.2 minutes. The average oneway commute in Houston takes 27.0 minutes. That’s longer than the US average of 26.4 minutes. The busiest times in Houston traffic are, obviously, rush hours: 7 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.
It’s interesting that our rush hours are two and three hours long each way. If you go to work five days a week, you spend almost 5 hours a week just sitting in your car. There are Houstonians whose legal voting address is the West Loop. There is one other aspect that we must consider about commuting: hybrid work. More and more employers are allowing their employees to spend part of the week at home and a day or so at the workplace.
Most workers choose to work at home Mondays and Fridays. That is why Happy Hours seem to be busier mid-week. The good news for the boss is that a hybrid workforce is expected to boost productivity by 4.6 percent mainly due to the reduction in commuting. Now strike up the bagpipes! Ashby is home at ashby2@comcast.net
