Charts in the wild! Visualizing workers (not) returning to the office
Charts depicting office vacancy rates from The Washington Post, Axios, and Visual Capitalist
In March of last year, U.S. News and World Report ran a story with the headline, “The Great Return: Companies Are Calling Their Workers Back to the Office as COVID-19 Fades.”
Didn’t age too well, did it? U.S. News wasn’t alone. Many news outlets covered employers’ very real and increasing demands that workers return to offices in-person. It’s become clear, though, that “workers are winning” the “battle” and maybe also the “war,” as recent headlines have described the divide between companies and their employees.
Men are returning to the office more quickly than women, reports Fortune. Level of education is a factor, too, with more educated workers reporting more flexibility on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) American Time Use Survey released in June.
Some companies have justified their mandates with myths about workers’ productivity being higher when staff are in the office. The data show just the opposite. Productivity plunged in the first half of 2022, when the worst of the pandemic was behind us and companies made their first real attempts at forced repatriation of office space. The…
