Three years after the coronavirus pandemic sent people to work from home in record numbers, U.S. employers are still struggling to get people back to the office.
It goes even deeper than you mention. If you have fewer people commuting, you have less pressure on the methods of commuting - roadways and public transit require implementation and maintenance, which is paid for by taxes. Less demand on those infrastructure things, and the public expense for those things also gets smaller, or you get better infrastructure. Crowded commuting makes transit longer and more stressful for people who do have to physically be somewhere, not to mention for commercial travel and emergency services. Then there’s the expense of the unnecessary pollution generated by unnecessary commuting.
Then there’s the ability for companies to have a vastly wider pool of workers if they’re not tied so tightly to people who live within commuting distance of an office, not to mention workers having a wider choice of employers. Not only does this allow business and labor to fine tune more for better outcomes on both sides, it has a secondary effect of allowing wealth to transfer from high cost of living areas to lower ones, which contributes to a stronger overall economy, in which secondary businesses which serve people where they are (entertainment, restaurants, telecommunications), and in the long term can support people’s ability to choose to live outside of metropolitan areas, further reducing overcrowding in terms of housing and public infrastructure, pollution, and the like.
The more people who can work remotely, the better off we will all be.
It goes even deeper than you mention. If you have fewer people commuting, you have less pressure on the methods of commuting - roadways and public transit require implementation and maintenance, which is paid for by taxes. Less demand on those infrastructure things, and the public expense for those things also gets smaller, or you get better infrastructure. Crowded commuting makes transit longer and more stressful for people who do have to physically be somewhere, not to mention for commercial travel and emergency services. Then there’s the expense of the unnecessary pollution generated by unnecessary commuting.
Then there’s the ability for companies to have a vastly wider pool of workers if they’re not tied so tightly to people who live within commuting distance of an office, not to mention workers having a wider choice of employers. Not only does this allow business and labor to fine tune more for better outcomes on both sides, it has a secondary effect of allowing wealth to transfer from high cost of living areas to lower ones, which contributes to a stronger overall economy, in which secondary businesses which serve people where they are (entertainment, restaurants, telecommunications), and in the long term can support people’s ability to choose to live outside of metropolitan areas, further reducing overcrowding in terms of housing and public infrastructure, pollution, and the like.
The more people who can work remotely, the better off we will all be.