Reports of Greater Office Work Ethic May Have Been Premature

The recent release of the American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics made a lot of heads look over as, to some, it seemed to answer the question of whether people worked as much at home as in the office.

“Americans are apparently getting lazier—at least according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” wrote Barron’s. “In its American Time Use Survey, released this past week, the BLS found that Americans working full time from home—33% in 2022, up from 25% in 2019—put in 2.5 hours fewer a day than their colleagues at the office.”

The publication went on to quote DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas as having written, “It’s no wonder labor force productivity has been negative for the past five straight quarters amid office occupancy that remains at sub-50% in the largest U.S. cities.”

Perhaps, but then again, it’s useful to read exactly what the BLS actually said. The government agency wrote, “34 percent [actually 33.8% in the data tables] of employed persons did some or all of their work at home and 69 percent of employed persons did some or all of their work at their workplace.”

“Some or all” is not remotely the same as working full-time from home. It could mean that some people split their days at least part of the time between the office and home, even on the same day. It means on the average given workday, 33.8% of people work from home, not necessarily the same 33.8%.

The “share of employed persons who spent time working at home on days worked” was 34%, and that was down from 38% in 2021, although still higher than 24% in 2019. Again, there is no way to tell from this data what percentage of employees worked full-time from home. Or whether people took some shorter days at home and put in more hours on weekdays, or even weekends, as 28.7% of full-time workers put in on average 5.6 hours on an average Saturday, Sunday, or holiday.

There is no way to know from the data how many people work full-time from home and how much work they put in per week might differ from the also unknown number of people who work full-time from an office.

Two other considerations. If looking at the BLS productivity report, the reason productivity dropped was because outputs increased far more slowly than the growth in the number of hours worked. However, if so many people were working full-time from home and putting in many less hours, would the hours worked have more likely increased or decreased? Given productivity in Q1 of 2023 was off from Q1 of 2022, and that was coming out of 2021, it might also be that as companies recovered, bringing people back in, there was an artificially low baseline that led to a higher perceived growth in office hours.

The second question is just how productively do personnel in offices work. There have been various studies suggesting that in an eight-hour day, the actual work done could be in the two-to-four-hour range. (Remember what it’s like to sit through meetings where few things might happen.) And as Daniel Goleman, a senior consultant at Goleman Consulting Group, wrote at Korn Ferry’s site that “employee engagement doesn’t have a ton to do with whether or not a worker is upright at their desk.” He continued, “Research shows it’s far more dependent on how well a person is treated by leadership and how motivated they are around a sense of purpose.”

In short, there is too much unknown in the data and too many questions about whether being in an office automatically creates more work.