- Workers value remote work as much as a 7% to 8% pay increase, a new survey finds.
- Hybrid work is especially valued by workers in their 30s with kids and degrees.
- Teleworking has increased, even as firms try to pull their workers back into the office.
If you’re reading this from the comfort of your desk at home you might not want to head back into the office anytime soon.
The push and pull between workers, their employers, and the office has been a years-long battle in the wake of the pandemic. And a new survey update shows how much remote workers value the ability to work from home — and what it may cost for firms to lure them back in.
The latest iteration of the monthly Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes looks at how much the ability to work from home is worth to workers; the survey, which has been ongoing since May 2020, is conducted in monthly waves of thousands of Americans ages 20 to 64.
The September survey of 9,457 Americans finds the typical worker who has worked from home at some point since 2020 said they would require an average of around 7.6% more pay to clock in fully in-person.
For those who currently work from home at least one day a week, hybrid or remote work is worth the same as a 9.6% pay raise.
The ability to be hybrid is more valuable for some groups than others. Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who helped spearhead the WFH research, told BI that workers “in their 30s, with kids and a university degree” said they’d need a 10% to 15% raise to come back to the office full-time.
That makes sense: Older millennials have been a driving force behind the continued push for work from home, as many moved further away from work and started having younger kids.
Indeed, despite numerous laments about RTO mandates, the percentage of Americans who are teleworking has actually risen over the last few years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that, in October 2022, just under 18% of Americans had teleworked or worked from home for pay during their survey reference week. By September 2024, that had risen to just under 24%.
Even though the working arrangements survey shows workers want raises to lure them back into the office, that doesn’t mean they’ll get them — or even find a remote role. Remote jobs are becoming scarcer, and that’s even led some workers to cling to roles they might not otherwise enjoy.
Conversely, Bloom said that the findings show what firms are up against when they want workers to come in.
“First, if you force folks back to the office 5-days a week they are going to be very unhappy. You have taken away something they value about the same as a 7% or 8% pay cut,” he said.
Some workers might even flat-out quit if they face a full-time return to office mandate. “Second, if you want to do a headcount reduction, a 5-day RTO is a cheap way to do this,” Bloom said, although alienating high-performers would have a cost: “It does reduce headcount but will hit growth as much of the top talent tends to leave.”
Has your employer tried to make you return to office? Did you get a pay raise? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com.
