The shift to WFH is the largest shock to labor markets in decades. Pre-pandemic WFH was trending towards 5% of days by 2022. Now WFH is now stabilizing at 30%, a 6-fold jump.
In America alone this is saving about 200 million hours and 6 billion miles of commuting a week.
@ShelbyBuckman@Jose_MariaRD Some questions on how to see this is stabilizing - this comes from higher frequency data. For example:
Another indicator that #WFH is permanent: public transit journeys stabilizing at 35% below 2019 levels.
This raises concerns over the survival of public transit systems. Costs are heavily fixed - think train and subway networks - but revenue is way down with 35% less journeys.
Thanks for great comments.
Yes shopping (see figure), eating out and entertainment are almost back at pre-pandemic levels. So commuting must have dropped >35%.
Yes this is big cities - 30% NY, 30% DC, Chicago etc - so a heavy office commuting skew. So aligns with Kastle data.
Replying to @p_ganong on city variations. Below is NY which shows about at 50% drop adjusting for seasonality.
Generally you see transit systems with more rail and subway have bigger drops as more office commuters. Transit systems that are more bus focused have smaller drops.