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.
The comparison only makes sense if the submitter was trying to tie up the story to the pressure on our roads at commute time. Working from home, cycling and walking are alternatives to driving to work.
The same happens to people who work in an office. Offices for knowledge workers are mostly a way for lazy managers to make sure you're "working," even if that entails watching Youtube cat videos at your desk. OTOH, someone who's been a successful contributor from a home office has a demonstrated ability to self-motivate without physical oversight. If they work best at 3 AM, and like to sleep during the day, why should it matter?
It's obviously position dependent. An autoworker can't work at home, a salesperson who's making customer calls all day - what does "office" really mean? For knowledge workers, it's mostly dependent on their ability to contribute. Technology provides many ways to collaborate without physical presence.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
My output when working at home is 1.3, not 0.8.
All you have is some hypothetical bullshit.