At what point do wages start to rise since inflation is getting bad?

 

You mean road rage? I imagine that will come back soon with traffic as people go back to the office.

 

I think the regionals will play the "we are recovering from COVID and can't afford anything" card for a bit. The pilot shortage was delayed a bit, but the movement will quickly start to hurt them again. I know that Envoy has had over 25 people leave the past two months. That is way higher attrition than the company has projected when they stupidly furloughed 227 pilots in October. At some point, the regionals are going to have to do more than throw a bonus at new hires and hope that it is sufficient to keep everyone happy. Pay rates have to rise, but management groups will do everything that they can in order to avoid doing so.

 

The legacies will be playing the same debt card. They burned billions of dollars that have to be paid back with interest, which leads to fewer dollars available to legacy or regional employees. I wouldn’t expect significant contractual gains from any company for a while.

 

It will be interesting to see how much office rush hour will be permanently reduced.

 

Most people I've talked to are being told they'll be back in the office. These are white-collar pros who have to collaborate and coordinate in a team. They're "hoping" to get one day/week at home, and that's not unreasonable to have a heads-down day to catch up on emails, etc. One guy I know who's an exec expects to allow one day at home, and it will be either wed/thur with employees evenly split, or maybe just wed only. No "freebie" 3-day weekends and he wants max opportunity for physical in-person meetings and collaborations, so the whole team will be in the office three or four days/week.

Some government employees *might* get to do telecommuting but only by claiming environmental benefits.... even that's iffy because the inevitable cases of fraud, waste, and abuse (ie GS "telecommuting" from the golf course, boat, etc) will trigger severe political blowback. Private sector can eat that as a cost of doing business and it won't make the six oclock news, but not .gov.

Some lower-end "widget" type productivity jobs will stay at home, as long as they can easily quantify your productivity. Maybe some accountants, etc. Computer programming was largely already telecommute pre-covid, where it made sense.

Even one day at home for many folks would make a dent in traffic, but it probably won't be on Mon or Fri as much (3-day weekend perception).

 

I think Fridays at home will be fairly common.

Some people will work from home exclusively with coming in to the office for meetings, perhaps one day a week.

Some people will be giving the option to move and work significantly away from big cities.

Taxes and regulations have an impact on this.

Elon Musk, with much of his companies, are relocating to Austin. HP, except for R&D, is relocating to an outer suburb of Houston. Both are moving out of Silicon Valley. This last year is the first time in history that California lost population.

Of course, much of their meetings will be by Zoom. However, they may actually increase business travel, compared to an entire company being located in one location.

 

I've heard it said elsewhere, if you can do your job remotely, so can someone else for far less money. That should be a real concern for anyone wanting to work remotely a majority of the time.

 

Depends. If any aspect of your job requires interaction/interface with actual people then language, cultural nuances, and inter-personal relations matters... and that applies to internal as well as external customers. The higher your job pays, the more that's true.

Software engineering and para-legal work doesn't offshore very well for example, although people keep trying. Ask Boeing how that worked out.

 

That will obviously be the case, for those who have the luxury of teleworking out of town... they'll need to show face at the head office periodically, either on the company's dime or their own. Especially if they want to be on the short-list for promotion... and not on the short-list for layoffs. Every place I've been involved in management maintained an updated layoff list, which included the post-layoff work transition plan. One time we executed on 14 hours notice... managers (those not being laid off)were told to stay late, first thing the next morning the soon-to-be-ex-employees were intercepted at the door as they arrived for work and diverted for their HR out-brief.

You won't want to be the employee that everybody jokes about, known mainly for the cat avatar you use instead of live camera on zoom. Or be like my kid... she made a ten-minute video loop of her just sitting there attentively with a headset on, which she then set as her zoom background for school

But from what I'm seeing most employers will want at least a few office days each week, although some folks might do a weekly commute and crashpad arrangement if they can spend 4-5 days/week back home, wherever that is.