Will They Ever Return?

eolesen wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 7:43 am Not sure what the fascination with the unemployment rate is when discussing knowledge workers. Those are the ones who are never coming back to the cities, and the ones most likely to live further out.

Does the unemployment rate not include them?

My point is that people can say whatever they want on a survey, yet the numbers on the ground don't show any kind of mass exit from the job market "just because my boss told me to come to the office".

They might be coming into the office only 3 days a week, and it's possible that some companies are still being lenient about the return. But let's not pretend like all knowledge workers are now working from home and will continue to do so forever. Those are simply not the facts on the ground.

Today's 8.25 LIRR arrival into NYP had no empty seats and that's even with some of the worst air quality NYC has seen in recent history.

lensovet wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:18 am Does the unemployment rate not include them?

Honestly, probably not. The gig economy for knowledge workers isn't new, and that's where the largest contingent of remote workers will always be. Companies simply don't add permanent workers when a contractor will do and is easier to get in place on little notice, and easier to cut when the work is over & done.

And gig workers won't show up in unemployment numbers because they're not filing for unemployment, and the whole notion behind gig work is you work when you want/need to, not because you have to.

lensovet wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:18 am My point is that people can say whatever they want on a survey, yet the numbers on the ground don't show any kind of mass exit from the job market "just because my boss told me to come to the office".

You're focused on the wrong metrics. It's not about who is on the train at 8am or what's going on in the overall job market.

The impact from WFH is loud and clear in other factors: commercial vacancy rates for office space, the number of adjacent space businesses that have closed up e.g. dry cleaning, convenience stores, and bar/restaurants that rely on lunch and happy hour traffic in business districts.

---> https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/nyre ... rates.html

Even downtown residential vacancy rates are a sign in places where you don't have an overall housing shortage or rent controls that people are grandfathered into and afraid to give up. Lots of residential vacancies in near downtown Chicago because people moved out of the city due to reduced presence in the office. I'm sure increasing violent crime rates haven't helped either.

Some still are placing "big time bets":

Wall Street Journal

Fair Use:

Employees frequently cite the dreaded commute as their biggest reason for avoiding the office. But one of America’s most prominent landlords is featuring the commute as a selling point for a 9-million-square-foot real-estate project surrounding Manhattan’s Penn Station.

Vornado Realty Trust is spending $1.2 billion overhauling two of its office buildings near the midtown transit hub, which serves commuters from several subway lines, Long Island, New Jersey and, starting in 2027, Westchester County, N.Y., and Connecticut.

“We think this is the most important development in the city and perhaps way, way beyond the city,” the New York firm’s chairman, Steven Roth, said in an interview.

Roth told Vornado investors that Friday office work is “dead forever” and “Monday is touch-and-go.” But he believes workers will continue to commute a few days a week so long as it is an easy journey. He calls train rides to Penn Station a “one-seat commute” because office employees won’t then need to take the subway to their offices.