Out of the Office: More People Are Working Remotely
Buying office space? Increasingly, American employees are working remotely and they are doing so for longer periods, according to a recent Gallup survey.
The New York Times reported that in 2016, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely. This represents a 4 percent increase since 2012.
The NYT article caught my attention because this trend has implications for investors and landlords, for example, parking requirements and demand for additional space. Some industries are embracing this trend faster than others and it may reflect in a lower demand for office space among those tenants.
According to the NYT/Gallup article, flexible scheduling and work-from-home opportunities play a major role in an employee’s decision to take or leave a job.
Here is a look at some of the report’s findings, as reported by the NYT.
- Those who work remotely do so for longer periods.
- It is not just that more working Americans are working off-site. The study shows that they are doing so more often, too.
- Employees who said they spent a day or less a week working remotely shrank substantially from 2012 to 2016, falling to 25 percent from 34 percent.
- At the same time, employees that reported working remotely four to five days a week grew by nearly the same amount, rising to 31 percent from 24 percent.
- Most of the industries embracing this concept represent the finance, insurance and real estate industries. The share of workers in those fields who report working remotely at least “sometimes” rose 8 percent, to 47 percent, from 2012 to 2016.
- In the transportation, computer, information systems and mathematics industries, well over half of employees work remotely some of the time.
Access New York Times article here ( hyperlink this link https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-from-home.html )