Working from home has held at 26% of US workdays, nearly four times the 2019 rate

At 26% against 7%, the share is about 3.7 times its 2019 level ^[9]. Measured from that 2019 low to the early-pandemic peak of 62%, it has kept about 35% of the climb ^[10]. Business Insider's own counterfactual is that without the pandemic it would probably have taken 40 years to reach today's level ^[14]. The line the source reports is flat ^[1].

For the time workers gain from a remote day, the article turns to Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist whom Business Insider calls the world's leading expert on remote work ^[4]. He estimates that the typical American worker saves an hour and a half for every day worked from home ^[5]. The article puts the average US commute at about 40 minutes each way ^[6]. In remote-friendly sectors such as tech and finance, the savings average about 3 hours a week ^[7]. At Bloom's per-day figure, that is two remote days a week ^[11].

Bloom hedges his estimate of the economy-wide benefit. "It's not impossible that hybrid increases labor participation rates by 1 to 2%, which probably increases GDP by about 1 to 2%," he said ^[15]. Business Insider converts that to an additional $300 billion to $600 billion in economic value ^[16].

An attendance rule is a trade between the office days an employer wants and the commute time its staff keep. This quarter's decision fixes the rule. We'd expect the first consequence to land on staff time, since each removed remote day takes back the saving Bloom describes ^[5]. The article does not count mandates, and it reports no employer-side figures on productivity or attrition. It cannot say whether firms that enforce have held the share down or paid for it elsewhere.