US Labor Department Says 73% of Businesses Don't Telework. Really?

The US Labor Department released a new survey this week which reports that 72.5% of business establishments said their employees teleworked “rarely or not at all” last year, a jump from the 60% who said so in a 2021 survey.

An establishment is defined in the government’s survey as a “business location,” with everything from a 500K SF office campus to a fast-food franchise counted as a single entity. The Labor Department says the 2022 non-teleworking benchmark is approaching the 76.7% pre-pandemic level.

According to the government survey, 21M more workers were on-site full time in 2022, compared to 2021. The survey said hybrid work decreased by 13% last year, with a significant drop in the financial sector, from 45% to 22%. However, the survey showed an increase in fully remote work to 11.1% in 2022, compared to 10.3% in 2021.

The survey also indicated that in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics still calls the information sector nearly 70% of the establishments have some or all employees working remotely; in the professional and business services sector it’s close to 50%.

The Wall Street Journal heralded the government survey with a Work-From-Home Era Ends for Millions banner, but WSJ also cited a new study by economists at Stanford and the University of Chicago that found that 28% of the days in February were work from home days, just a slight dip from the average of 30% throughout 2022—and more than five times the rate that prevailed before the pandemic.

So what kind of work strategy was the US Labor Department following while it conducted its survey heralding the beginning of the end of teleworking at business establishments across the nation, you ask?

We’ll pause for a moment as you picture a cubicle in a drab Eisenhower-era government office, the walls painted government green, the minute hand on a huge clock overhead noting every minute with a loud metallic click—let’s call it the Doomsday Clock—a clerk at a wooden desk wearing a pocket protector filled with ballpoint pens (the ones that always leak) and a clip-on bow tie, toiling from nine to five (with a 35-minute lunch break) under a framed portrait of Herbert Hoover, who invented the BLS’ SIC codes. (Okay, we made up the last part.)

Now—while we google the words “telework” and “US Labor Department”—take a look at that guy in his Bald Eagle feet pajamas reclining in a Naugahyde barcalounger munching from a bowl of popcorn and watching a Nationals spring training game on a 65-inch TV while glancing at email on an iPhone.

We’ve been transported to a Department of Labor (DOL) web page that heralds the Telework Success of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration & Management, a.k.a. the department’s HR director. The page informs us that “with more than 91% of DOL’s nationwide staff teleworking,” DOL has “ramped up its bandwidth.”

We’ll give DOL the benefit of the doubt that this page has been up on their website for more than two years, and we’re not singling them out amongst government agencies. The dirty little secret—and it’s not a secret—is that most of the federal government in Washington DC hasn’t returned to the office.

Teleworking by federal workers—the government doesn’t like to call it remote work—has crushed Washington’s office market and emptied buildings throughout DC’s downtown CBD.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser earlier this month challenged President Biden to either order federal workers back to their offices or to vacate all of the office buildings under lease to the federal government so they can be targeted for office-to-residential conversions in DC.

The Feds are not the only level of government services adjusting work patterns to adapt to the shift to hybrid work.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who last year publicly scolded city workers—telling them they couldn’t “stay at home in your pajamas all day”—changed course and agreed to a new contract with the largest union representing municipal workers, a deal that sets up a program to allow non-essential city workers to adopt hybrid and remote work schedules.

According to Adams, NYC made this concession because the city can’t compete with hybrid work offers from the private sector. New York City has been having trouble filling positions and retaining workers in several major departments, including housing and social services, Adams said.