Remote Work Is Increasingly for The Rich

Opinion|Where’s the Boss? Remote Work Is Increasingly for the Rich.

When it comes to remote work, the C-Suite wants workers to do as they say, not as they do.

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, once said, “I don’t work well in an office.” Which makes one wonder where he was when Salesforce’s employees were ordered to return to the office three or more days a week? Perhaps he was sequestered at his 600-acre ranch in the genteel upcountry of Hawaii’s Waimea district. Or maybe at his oceanfront estate, just down the hill.

In late October, Starbucks — under its newly minted leader, Brian Niccol — warned the coffee company’s corporate employees that they must also return to the office three days a week by January. Yet Mr. Niccol continues to make his primary home in sunny Newport Beach, Calif. Starbucks has provided him with dedicated office space, a local personal assistant and a corporate jet ready to fly him the 1,000 miles to and from the company’s world headquarters in Seattle. A company representative told CNBC that Mr. Niccol will be held to the same three days a week standard.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world in 2020, many of America’s office workers were suddenly able to work from home, introducing previously unimagined flexibility. They could move to more affordable locales, apply for jobs regardless of location and balance the demands of work and family. This privileged perk, however, opened a new divide, as many essential workers still had to report to their stations.

Now, growing numbers of the white-collar class are under increasing pressure to return, while many corner offices sit empty. The ability to work from home was always economically stratified. Now it is often being reserved for the wealthiest among us.

Research by the Stanford University economist and remote work expert Nick Bloom shows that postpandemic, the number of days people are allowed to work from home correlates to their income. Work-from-home days have fallen by 16 percent for workers earning between $10,000 and $100,000 a year — but only by 5 percent for those making $200,000 or more.

Perhaps that’s why Mr. Bloom found a correlation between income earned and distance from the office. Only 5 percent of employees earning between $10,000 and $50,000 a year work 50 or more miles from their company headquarters, compared with 14 percent earning more than $250,000. The gap is growing despite research that concludes that working from home can benefit employees and employers alike. Mr. Bloom found that the practice improves gender mix by increasing the number of women in the work force, expands the labor supply in an otherwise tight market, improves the disability employment gap and supports families and home life. As one LinkedIn poster put it, replying to Mr. Bloom, “Isn’t it amazing what the ability to put in a load of laundry during the workday can do for overall happiness.”