Leaked memo reveals Meta's harsh work policy change

The Covid pandemic was a unsocial clip for U.S. workers.

After the archetypal daze of the pandemic caused unemployment to leap to 13% by the 2nd 4th from 3.5% successful February 2020, unemployment dipped to 6.7% by the 4th fourth arsenic businesses figured retired work-from-home solutions that allowed them to support operating portion the state was locked down.

• Seven retired of 10 companies person ceremonial RTO policies requiring immoderate in-office time.

• A astonishing 93% of concern leaders judge being successful the bureau is necessary.

• Fully flexible setups (remote oregon employee’s choice) dropped from 39% of jobs to 28% betwixt 2023 and 2024.

• Only 7% of companies let afloat distant enactment successful 2025, down from 21% successful 2024.

• While 44% of employees accidental they’d comply with a 5-day bureau mandate, 41% would commencement looking for different work, and 14% would quit.
  Source: Archie

By outpouring 2021, the fig of disposable jobs exceeded the fig of disposable workers, according to the Federal Reserve.

Workers, particularly white-collar workers, hadn't had this overmuch leverage successful decades arsenic tech companies competed for endowment crossed the spectrum.

The mean tech wage jumped astir 7% betwixt 2020 and 2021, exceeding $104,000 per year, the highest ever recorded by the Dice Tech Salary Report.

The biggest winners from the Covid-era work-from-home policies were employers themselves.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates "total origin productivity" by dividing outputs by a operation of inputs that see workers, machinery, and different capital.

Related: Tech giant's layoffs deed astir 2,000 engineers

The BLS compared productivity information crossed 61 industries from 2007 to 2019, with information from the aforesaid industries betwixt 2019 to 2021.

"We inactive find a affirmative and statistically important relation betwixt the emergence successful distant enactment and TFP growth," BLS said successful an October 2024 study connected pandemic wages.

"We find the aforesaid relation betwixt the emergence successful distant enactment and excess TFP maturation if we look astatine the excess TFP maturation successful the 2019-22 play compared with the prior-business-cycle TFP growth. Overall, our results suggest that the emergence successful distant enactment and TFP maturation are positively correlated."

The information processing and net publishing sector, arsenic good arsenic the machine systems plan and related services industries, saw immoderate of the astir important maturation successful productivity erstwhile comparing these 2 periods, according to the BLS data.

However, the tech manufacture has been the astir assertive successful encouraging its employees to instrumentality to the bureau since the extremity of the pandemic.