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Key Takeaways

• Many companies don’t intend to change their WFH stance for the next 12 months.
• WFH is recession-proof: A downturn in economic conditions would lead to only a slight decline in remote and hybrid work.
• Return-to-office plans will reduce the WFH share of all paid workdays by only 0.4 percentage points.

When Amazon ordered its staff back to the , many speculated that remote and hybrid work were on the way out. Several other large firms recently , which seemed to confirm the slide.

That led us to wonder how much Return To Office (RTO) mandates would shift the overall work-from-home (WFH) landscape in the United States? To tackle this question, we surveyed more than a thousand businesses executives about WFH and RTOs at their own firms. The clear answer – they see little change.

We probed the issue in the latest wave (fielded February 10-21) of the (SBU), which covers firms across U.S. industries and regions. On WFH, executives report that roughly one-third of their workforces, on average, work remotely one or more days per week. Working from home accounts for one-fifth of all paid workdays among American employees, according to the SBU data.

 Regarding RTO mandates, we asked the executives to look ahead:

“During the next 12 months, is your firm planning a return-to-office mandate for those employees who currently work in hybrid or fully remote arrangements?”

Just 12 percent of the executives that currently have hybrid or remote workers report plans for an RTO mandate in the year ahead. And many of these mandates don’t involve a full return to onsite work. Instead, more than a quarter of the planned RTOs will require onsite work only 1 to 4 days a week.

Figure 1: Return-to-Office mandates barely move the needle on WFH

Question: What do you expect would be the share of your firm's full-time employees in each category under the return-to-office mandate? Answers should sum to 100 Your firm's current shares are in parentheses.

Firms' working arrangements before and after RTO mandate

• Paid working days at home as a percent of all working days currently: 21.2%
• Pald working days at home as a percent or all working days after under the return -to-office mandate: 20.8%

Paid working days at home as a percent of all working days is calculated by converting the number of days at home to a fraction of the 5-day workweek (0.3 for 1-2 days, 0.7 for 3-4 days, and 1 for 5 days)

Compared to current working arrangements, these RTO mandates will barely move the needle on WFH. We calculate that these planned RTOs will reduce the WFH share of all paid workdays by only 0.4 percentage points, cutting it from 21.2 percent of days to 20.8 percent of days. Even this 0.4 percentage point reduction in days worked from home may never happen given the struggles firms face when trying to implement RTOs.

In summary, U.S. firms do not see any material trend to return to office.

We also asked firms the about their WFH shares of paid working days in November 2024. Comparing our February 2025 data with November 2024 we find very little change. The share of paid working days performed from home is stable at about 20 percent of paid workdays, according to our SBU data.  ( also show stability in WFH rates since early 2023.) And for the firms that did change practices, it was pretty balanced between firms increasing and decreasing their levels of WFH. Some firms were calling employee back with new RTO announcements, while others were increasing WFH as their office leases expired.

Figure 2: Changes in firms' WFH stances are evenly distributed and centered on zero

Question: Currently, what share of your firm's full-time employees are in each category? Answers should sum to 100

WFH as Percent of Paid Workdays

Finally, we also took up another question that each time economic conditions weaken: “What will a recession do to WFH?” Here, speculation centers around the power balance between workers and employers. In tight labor markets, when it’s hard to attract and retain talent, it may be easier for the employee to bargain for flexible working arrangements. When labor markets are slack, that bargain might be harder to strike.

So, we again turn to business executives in the SBU. Specifically, we asked:

“The latest labor market data shows the unemployment rate was 4.0 percent in January. If a downturn in business conditions caused the unemployment rate to double to 8.0 percent, how would that affect your firm’s work-from-home policies?”

Eighty-five percent of the executives say WFH policies at their firms won’t change if unemployment doubles. Fourteen percent say this type of big rise in unemployment would reduce remote work at their firms, and a very small share (1.7 percent) say it would lead to more remote work. This modest recall of workers more frequently into the office, on average, leads to a 0.9 percentage point decline in paid workdays at home (compared to a 0.4 percentage point decline anticipated over the year-ahead). So even a major recession would not generate much change in working from home.

Figure 3: A significant downturn in economic conditions motivates a slight decline in WFH

Question: You said that your firm would increase/reduce the share of hybrid or fully-remote employees if the unemployment rate were to double. What do you expect would be the share of your firm's full-time employees in each category under the new policy? Answers should sum to 100 Your firm's current shares are in parentheses.

Firm's working arrangements before and after economic downturn

These findings don’t support the idea that a recession would bring many employees back to the office. Instead, they suggest that many employers like remote work because it reduces floorspace needs, raises productivity, and lowers quits. Indeed, in the of the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, only 44 percent of employees say they would comply with an RTO policy that requires fully onsite work. The rest say they would either quit immediately (14 percent) or start seeking a new job (41 percent).

So, whatever happens in the US economy over the next year, we think working from home is here to stay.