The same percentage of employed people who worked remotely in 2023 is the same as the previous year, a survey found
Don’t call it work from home any more, just call it work. According to new data, what once seemed like a pandemic necessity has become the new norm for many Americans.
Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the results of its American time use survey, which asks Americans how much time they spend doing various activities, from work to leisure.
The most recent survey results, released at the end of June, show that the same percentage of employed people who did at least some remote work in 2023 is the same percentage as those who did remote work in 2022.
In other words, it’s the first stabilization in the data since before the pandemic, when only a small percentage of workers did remote work, and a sign that remote work is here to stay.
However, a lot of folks would love to work at a California based company, be paid California based wages, and then live in an Arkansas cost of living. You have a super valid point for your own standard of living, but there are plenty of workers willing to make that trade for the financial security.
Suddenly a percentage of the Arkansas population actually has a decent amount of income, you start getting some purchases and tax income in the area, now the ass end of Podunk, AK actually has a little bit of cash money to invest in their area. Rinse and repeat in a hundred thousand little drive-by towns across rural America. As long as it has internet connection someone can make a good living there, and that’s a huge difference to what we’ve traditionally seen in those towns - that being, everyone is broke as shit, so there’s no real upward mobility for anyone because there’s no new money coming in. This is a huge step forward towards addressing that.
I mean, you’re probably not wrong. Getting more money in the hands of poor people would likely be good for everyone.
But i would rather have people live in denser, more walkable, more human spaces. We don’t really need to have our living spaces where the nearest grocery is 5 miles away.
Why would we want to keep the sprawl and low density as a first class option? We don’t need to keep people living in Podunk, AR just because that’s where they are. It’s expensive for society. We should be discouraging low density.