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More Americans Now Work Full-Time From Home Than Walk and Bike To Office Jobs (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: In the United States, the past decade has been marked by booming cities, soaring rents, and a crush of young workers flocking to job-rich downtowns. Although these are heady days for pavement-pounding urbanists, a record 2.6% of American employees now go to their jobs without ever leaving their houses. That's more than walk and bike to work combined. These numbers come from a Quartz analysis of data from the U.S. census and the American Community Survey. The data show that telecommuting has grown faster than any other way of getting to work -- up 159% since 2000. By comparison, the number of Americans who bike to work has grown by 86% over the same period, while the number who drive or carpool has grown by only 12%. We've excluded both part-time and self-employed workers from these and all results. Though managers are the largest group of remote workers, as a percentage of a specific occupation computer programmers are the most over-represented. Nearly 8% of programmers now work from home, following a staggering increase of nearly 400% since 2000.
since they probably don't count illegal immigrants but almost certainly count the kinds of higher level office workers how work from home.
Also, It'd be hard to imagine a more irrelevant metric given how few Americans walk/bike to work. I mean, in theory I can bike to work but it's a 70 minute run one way and I'll get to work covered in sweat...
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You better be the best of the freaking best, because you're one step away from being outsourced to someone else remote who costs 1/8th of what you do.
Its pretty damn hard to walk and bike at the same time. That's some circus stuff right there.
"the country is 1/20th of the population."
It's also less than 1/200th of the area.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So major trend and yet the M&M at Yahoo killed it all because it needed to steal ideas from employees to claim them as it's own, really lame, Yahoo reaching back to the last millennium through incompetence. You have to think how pissed off the Yahoo coders must have be, they had it and same lame arse peter principle bitch stole it, no wonder Yahoo crashed into a screaming heap, all those security lapses, very pissed off insider revenge, high level extremely skilled and well coordinated insider revenge (no trail left behind, none). I forgot how much fun working from home was, it was decades ago and to have that taken and they knew exactly why, well, there will be repercussions, bad repercussion pissing off thousands of staff because you are incompetent and need to steal other people's ideas to look good.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Since roughly 57% of all statistics are made up, you should be suspicious...or maybe I made that statistic up.
More Americans Now Work Full-Time From Home Than Walk and Bike To Office Jobs
How is that significant?
At some point in history there were more computers than waffle irons but I don't remember anyone making a news story out of it...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You don't have to share the bathroom with transsexuals (unless you want to).
As someone who used to bike to work, I understand how it is possible more people work at home instead. To be able to walk to work or to bike to work is a luxury driven by being able to live close enough to where you work--and for many jobs that means living in a highly populous urban core or being wealthy enough (or in my case, lucky enough) to live in a home near the downtown corridor where your job is located.
Working at home, on the other hand, is simply a function of having the right job. And I know quite a few people who work at home: I know a couple of people who work for Apple as customer support who work out of their homes, and I know of a bunch of account managers at YP.com who work out of their homes. If your job involves a lot of time talking to people on the phone or chatting over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are located so long as you have a phone line and an internet connection.
What determines walkability or bikability is population density. The population density of most populated areas of the United States is very low compared to Europe. On the other hand, if given a choice most people in the United States want their single family detached homes, their modest yards and a little elbow room from their neighbors--which directly implies either a low population density, or desirable housing only being accessible to a very small percentage of the population.
Yeah, but having big lawns and big houses in the suburbs and ever increasing property values tends to get people moving further and further away.
Americans put up with some ridiculous commute times, although they aren't nearly as crazy as the Japanese. But at least in the US you can spend that time in the comfort of your own space, your car. And not weaving and dodging traffic on a bicycle or stewing in a packed train car.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is this really news? I live in an area where it rains pretty much the year round. Biking to work isn't impossible, merely challenging and unpleasant. I wonder if the uptick in biking to work is not because biking has become more popular but because there exists more circumstances (crowded downtown, difficulty with parking) where it's the only practical option.
On the other hand, the only factors keeping us from a huge uptick in working from home are (a) old school company policies, and (b) lack of broadband. And perversely, access to broadband is reportedly *less* likely downtown, (I believe there was a slashdot article on that last year) due to legacy wiring, (low speed dsl only) giving the edge for work-from-homers to the suburbs which are more likely to have cable or fiber. Suburb professionals also being the same class that are looking at a possible hellish auto commute and impractical logistics to bike into downtown, increasing the attraction of WFH.
I'd be interested in seeing the statistics broken out by distance from work, and perhaps split between jobs downtown and jobs in the suburbs. (For instance, the Intel plants -- major tech employer -- in this area are *not* downtown, but quite a bit out west of the city. So biking to work is more practical, but driving to work is more appealing also.)
I dunno, the more I think about it the more complicated the picture gets. I don't think percentage increases in commuting categories for all of America would necessarily lead to valid conclusions.
And incidentally, regarding the old school policies ("If you work from home, you work for someone else, not us") it's amusing how a company with strict rules *against* work from home will happily employ offshore programmers who (for all they know) are balancing an old laptop across their knees in a tin shack. But dammit, the locals they employ had better the hell have butts in cubicle seats first thing every morning.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Even BestBuy who poineered Roowe for working at home results only now requires employees to come in. Yahoo no longer allows this and Facebook bans this and so are others. It seems it's on the way out as employers now focus on hours at the desk with face time to watch results and keep an eye seems to be more important in trends recently
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How many Americans are doing nothing from home, because there aren't any jobs in America.
There are working people who have jobs, you say. I say you're lying.
And perversely, access to broadband is reportedly *less* likely downtown,
holy fuck, you must be living in some third world country like albania or north korea or most probably trumpistan
On my prior jobs, I had the ability to work remotely when needed. But I was still expected to show up in an office every work day.
Just started a new job where the company has a large number of people working at home full time who never have to report to an office. It is a very weird experience, mainly because everything is remote, protected by multiple layers of VPNs and VMs and custom applications and so forth. And complicated by the employees who come from all backgrounds and skill. There are grandmothers and teenagers and everything between.
This matters because there are always steps with a new job, like obtaining network credentials, getting setup with HR, accessing the tools we will be using AND since we are all using our own PCs to do this, a whole extra level knowledge about how their PC and internet connection actually work. And a lot of people have no idea about simple things like ALT-Tab to change windows.
One person in the group was exiting the multiple layers of VPN and VM and relogging every time they wanted to swap to another window to look at something else. The company reps did nothing to control this, so the whole group had to wait for stragglers to figure out where to put a login ID and oh wait, here we go again with someone who can't ALT-Tab.
Anyway it turns out this company provides services for a vast array of clients and it's booming. They'll hire almost anyone. Clearly.
For me, this work is a pay cut but it beats nothing and means my commute to work is 15 feet instead of 15 miles of rush hour traffic twice a day. The savings on gas and wear and tear on my car will be tremendous. I am sold on this concept.
Sig for hire.
I have a big house with huge rooms and high ceilings, with no lawn whatsoever. I couldn't be happier. Lawns are a pain the arse. Walking distance to the bar, starbucks, supermarket, doctor and 5 restaurants, but no lawn. It's 28 houses in one development with dual use zoning for business and residential and it turns out to be the only such development in the entire state. It's either house + lawn or shitty apartment. People don't know what they're missing because they have no opportunity to try something else because in this corner of the country they don't build like that.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You should be looking for another one.
You're going to be out of a job soon
I'm happy sharpening my chainsaw and cleaning my guns, and I'm not interested in starbucks. Each to their own I guess.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's hardly relevant when you look at the rate of urbanisation in the USA. Americans need to stop using their large amounts of completely unused land as an excuse for why their cities are poorly setup have crumbling infrastructure and low investment.
We're talking about cycling and walking. The dutch don't do that to the next city even though the next major city is only 20km away ... in every direction.
The population density of most populated areas of the United States is very low compared to Europe.
hahahah no, not at all. The urbanisation rates of USA make their cities far more populated than most of Europe. The only difference is your cities are further apart.
That doesn't mean that the home office is booming, it's just that US citizens are lazy sons of bitches.
A better comparison would be to look at population density of urban areas.
Amsterdam has around 4.4 thousand people per square km. New York, San Fransisco, Boston and Chicago all have higher pop density than that. Miami and Philadelphia are similar. Yet the percentage of people who walk/bike is massively lower.
Yes, compact cities/towns are a requirement for walking/cycling to be popular, but you also need urban design to allow it. Every US city I have been to outside of NY has been pretty horrible to try and get across by European standards: long waits at crossings, main roads with no crossings at all for hundreds of meters, few pedestrian bridges/tunnels, bad signage, litter and pollution everywhere. The odd underpass that was around was often a permanent encampment of homeless people, and the general attitude of motorists to pedestrians/cyclists was very poor. Driving is just such a big part of the culture that anyone who doesn't is a second-class citizen.
What state/city did they get the data pool from? I bet it was from San Francisco or some place like Seattle. Some hipster type area. Last I heard remote working was down and not well liked among employers.
I'm a software Dev who has been working from home (100% of the time) since 2006. It's pretty clear to that there are huge advantages both to the employee and the employer for people to work from home. The employee, it's obvious. No travel to and from work, comfort, flexibility, privacy (something lacking in an office space and makes it hard to concentrate). You save money on lunches (I just eat leftovers from dinner for lunch), clothes (typically just wear shorts or sweat and a T shirt), wear and tear on your car. Etc Etc. What less people think about is the benefit to the company. They need less office space. My company has 11,000 employees and only enough office space for around a third of them. Mainly the office space is largely just for the companies hardware. Less office space not only means less rent, but less utilities. Also spending less on amenities such as water coolers, snacks, coffee, etc etc. Everything adds up. The biggest benefit, is that you can greatly expand your hiring pool. You can truly hire the people you need not just the people who are in the area your office is in. I work on a team of a little over a dozen people. There are people from OH, VA, MI, TN, LA, CA, HI and TX on it. Also, it makes longer support hours easier without paying someone to be on call 24/7. Notice how my team has people in CA and HI. That's because my team supports production data. We have people who work 8-4 and 10-6 in their local time zones on my team. That means we have people who are supporting prod from 8am EST, until 6PM HAST. Which is 8am - Midnight EST. That's all just from people working their normal shifts. Someone is still on call during the weekends, but that's good enough during the week that we don't have to be on call during the week at least. It also saves the company quite a bit in salary. My company is based out of DC but most of their workforce isn't in DC. This saves them a ton of money. They can't outsource because most of the jobs (but not all) have to have clearance for the .gov contracts. Living in Ohio, I'm much cheaper than a software dev in DC. Even though I come with a lot of experience and still make a great living in my area. You probably wouldn't even get much interest from fresh college grads in DC for what I currently make. The cost of living in DC is about 60% higher than in my area so having a workforce outside of DC saves them a whole lot of money.
If that's all you do, your chainsaw will get dirty and your guns will get blunt.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The population density of most populated areas of the United States is very low compared to Europe
As the other poster said, this is simply untrue. The vast majority of the population of the USA lives in cities with a higher population density than the areas that the majority of Europeans live in. The USA also has a load of empty space that almost no one lives in, which skews averages a lot and is constantly used as an excuse for why US infrastructure is so bad. One of the big problems in the US is the zoning concept that seems to try to ensure that places people live, places people work, and places people go for recreation are all far apart.
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This is more proof that our cities must build more bike lanes