The COVID-19 pandemic shifted expectations of work from home for employees and employers, said Jason Brown and Colton Tousey, economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in a report Thursday.
Prior to the pandemic, only about 15% of employees over the course of a year performed any full workdays from home, Brown and Tousey said. The early stages of the pandemic led nearly 40% to work from home when businesses shifted toward remote work to slow the spread of the virus.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Employees are returning to the office as COVID-19 moves to an endemic state, but many prefer to continue working from home a portion of the time, the economists said. In a tight labor market, employers may feel pressure to provide greater employee flexibility while wrestling with concerns about productivity and employee engagement, resulting in a gap between employee preferences for work from home and employer plans.
Knowing who currently works from home a larger share of the time and where this gap is narrowest across employee characteristics and locations helps explain where, and for whom, work from home is most likely to remain a permanent feature in the labor market.
The economists found that the share of paid working days from home was higher for employees with higher income, those who live in more densely populated areas and those with faster internet connections.
Employees reported a desire to work from home “after COVID” a larger fraction of time compared with their expectations (or understanding) of their employers’ plans for permitting work from home. Despite this difference, they found that over time, employer plans on average have moved closer to workers’ expectations.
TRENDS
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, work from home was far less common for most US employees in terms of frequency and percentage of time spent at home, the report said. According to 2017–18 data from the American Time Use Survey, 29% of wage and salary jobs could be performed from home, and 25% of employees occasionally worked from home for a portion of the day.
Although 15% of employees reported working a full day at home over the course of a year, only 14.5% of them reported working from home five days a week or more, the economists said. Thus, only around 2% of US employees (14.5% of the 15%) worked from home full time.
The trends in work from home shifted abruptly with the onset of the pandemic with many at first being told to work from home. Early on, the plausibility was uncertain, but it was found that many desk jobs could be done at home, so more are allowed now.
CATTLE, BEEF RECAP
The USDA reported formula and contract base prices for live FOB steers and heifers this week ranged from $160.90 to $162.08 per cwt, compared with last week’s range of $159.00 to $161.05. FOB dressed steers, and heifers went for $251.10 to $258.71 per cwt, versus $244.44 to $255.60.
The USDA choice cutout Thursday was unchanged at $287.91 while select was up $2.23 at $275.87. The choice/select spread narrowed to $12.04 from $14.27 with 93 loads of fabricated product and 14 loads of trimmings and grinds sold into the spot market.
The USDA said basis bids for corn from feeders in the Southern Plains were unchanged at $1.50 to $1.60 a bushel over the Mar corn contract. Bids in Kansas were steady at $0.75 over Mar, which settled at $6.60 1/4 a bushel, down $0.15.
Six heifer contracts were retendered and demanded for delivery on Thursday at one.
The CME Feeder Cattle Index for the seven days ended Wednesday was $182.57 per cwt, down $0.03. This compares with Thursday’s Mar contract settlement of $189.22 per cwt, up $1.25.