More babies, more workers, way more AI
Six years after the pandemic, remote work isn't dead. Research links working from home to more births, increased employment, and faster AI adoption.
Maxim Konankov, Agnès Bun, Thomas Trutschell, Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty Images, and Alyssa Powell have reported that working from home has become a lasting feature of the American workplace. The prevalence of remote work has increased from 7% in 2019 to around 26% of all American work days, nearly quadrupling since then. Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford, is the world's leading expert on remote work and warned that years of turmoil would follow as employees and employers adjusted to the new work terms.
The main benefits of working from home include saving time, increasing the workforce, leading to more births, and reducing pollution. On average, American workers save an hour and a half for every day they work from home, leading to 3 hours of extra time per week for those in WFH-friendly sectors. The extra time is being spent on sleeping, exercising, cooking, and parenting, particularly for parents with children.
The increased flexibility of remote work has also resulted in a 5% increase in fertility in the US and Northern Europe, which is crucial in developed countries facing declining birth rates. In addition, urban areas have seen a reduction in nitrogen dioxide levels by 8% since 2019, resulting in between 1,500 and 3,500 fewer deaths annually.
However, city centers have suffered from a weakened commercial real estate market and declining public transit systems, with some cities facing budget shortfalls. The rise of AI is also transforming the work landscape.
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