30% of job postings on LinkedIn are for remote work, which isn’t going away anytime soon. According to an UpWork economist report, by 2025 another 16.8 million American workers will take the plunge and leave the office behind.
“People have been begging to work from home for a long time, and we’ve had this bias against it,” says best-selling business author and Culture Architect Dr. Daren Martin. “But guess what? People are working from home now.”
In September of 2021 the Houston Business Journal pegged downtown Houston office vacancies at 30%. Businesses are shrinking their office space footprint to accommodate more flexibility in days, hours and locations for employees to get their work done.
Yet, Transtar finds traffic is more congested than before the virus hit. Explanations for that non sequitur will take time, probably deduced from someone sitting at their dining room table petting the dog.
Businesses are going to have to adjust more than desks. “If people are going to work from home, are they going to pay for your electricity? Or are they going to pay for a certain part of your rent, or your mortgage?” asks Martin.
And how is the IRS going to adjust business deductions and home office expenses, which were all reduced heavily in the most recent tax cuts enacted in 2017?
There are most questions than answers in times of paradigm shifts or radical transformations, but one thing is certain. Remote work isn’t going to go away.
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