Remote-first work is taking over the rich world

IN FEBRUARY 2020 Americans on average spent 5% of their working hours at home. By May, as lockdowns spread, the share had soared to 60%—a trend that was mirrored in other countries. Many people, perhaps believing that working from home really meant shirking from home, assumed that office life would soon return to something like its pre-pandemic norm. To say it has not turned out that way would be a huge understatement.Most office workers remain steadfastly “remote-first”, spending most of their paid time out of the office. Even though a large share of people have little choice but to physically go to work, 40% of all American working hours are still now spent at home. In mid-October American offices were just over a third full, suggest data from Kastle Systems, a security firm. From Turin to Tokyo, commercial areas of cities remain substantially quieter, compared with pre-covid norms, than residential ones. Economists are trying to work out what all this means for productivity.