Bars and restaurants have been devastated by the lockdown of cities. But the longer this goes on, the far greater hit will be to a hidden, trillion-dollar economy linked to a much under-appreciated economic actor—the white-collar office worker. 1/5 marker.medium.com/remote-work-is…
With JPMorgan, Twitter, REI, Pinterest and more postponing a return and scrapping their offices entirely, they have transformed once-teeming city business districts into ghost towns with essentially vacant skyscrapers. 2/5
The office worker keeps airlines in the air, hotels buzzing, Xerox pumping out cartridges, 3M making Scotch tape, and apparel shops fitting business suits. They keep dry cleaners going, barbers cutting, and office cleaners cleaning. All of this has been deflated or cut. 3/5
The implosion is visible in cities, which are losing their centrality. Apartment-dwellers are fleeing New York and San Francisco, which are suddenly replete with vacancies. City revenues are plunging. 4/5
Cities have always survived and they will this time, too. Urban housing will be cheaper, allowing folks who couldn’t afford it to finally live there. But the transition to something else could be long, with pain for perhaps a generation of merchants and workers. 5/5
