I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
> Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
I'm a manager at a smaller company and I can tell you we are very much aware that we are not a big corp and that "big co" things are not going to work for us. Me and the other managers I've worked with have read all the "gotta see your empire" comments on HN and other places and our general reaction is: "good, now I know what not to do".
I will say at my company, we were all in-office with maybe 5% remote in 2019, now that number is closer to 50%. We are seeing the advantages and the massage from higher ups (VP's, President, CEO) to all middle managers is: adapt or die. The way we look at it is, if we force RTO, all it will do is drive away talent. We now live in a world where you can't look up and see all your reports, some managers like it, some hate it, but the general vibe is: "we have to adapt (and no we are not Google)"
Oh, but then you'll miss out on all of those "random hallway conversations where the real 'innovation' occurs".
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.