In 2020, remote work became the norm for many people around the world out of sheer necessity. Fast forward three years and companies want their workers back in the office.
Goldman Sachs is pressuring employees to return to the office five days a week, while other big names including Amazon, Apple, Disney, IBM, Blackrock and Meta have all mandated varying degrees of a hybrid schedule. Zoom, that enabler of remote work, recently jumped on the bandwagon, asking its employees to return to the office twice a week.
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And even as 98% of workers have expressed the desire to work remotely at least some of the time, according to Forbes, employment expert Jason Greer thinks Goldman has the right idea.
"It's time to face reality. We're getting back to a five-day week. That's what we saw before Covid and that's what we're currently seeing," Greer, speaking to CNBC through a remote connection, said. "Companies are coming from the perspective of this: 'if I pay you every two weeks to come into the office, you come into the office.'"
Greer said that the employment environment is vastly different now than it was during the pandemic, to the point that companies feel much more comfortable in demanding their workers make a return to the office, knowing that they will lose a few people.
"They understand that if they put these mandates in place, we're going to lose some people," he said, "but the good thing is there is so much available talent that we can replace them with people who will actually command less than what those people out the door are commanding."
But the labor market was "historically tight at the outset of 2023," according to the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. There were "two job openings for every unemployed person, the highest such ratio that has been recorded in Bureau of Labor Statistics data."
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Though job openings recently fell to their lowest level in two years in June, the labor market remains tight, with 1.61 job openings for every unemployed person in June. Job openings fell to 9.582 million as of the last day of June.
"The days of Covid where we were able to work remotely, they're gone," Greer said.
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