[rgbrenner]

Even during the lockdowns only 40% of the US workforce worked from home. Here’s another stat: only 33% of the us population has a bachelors degree or higher.

Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc.

The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.

[iso947]

Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. There’s little difference To prospects to someone working as a plumber in a town of 30k people vs a city of 3m people.

[dragonwriter]

> Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs.

If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.

[kelnos]

Sure, but you need a lot more plumbers in a city of 3M people than you do in a town of 30k. And those plumbers create demand for housing.

[juniper_strong]

"only 40%"

Step out of your bubble and think about what it would mean if 40% of Americans worked from home full time.

It can be done, we've seen that, now people are running the numbers and seeing what that means. Pre-covid it was something like 3% that worked from home at least half the time.

If 3% turns into 40% - or even 20% or 6% - that starts to change things.