After opposing the idea for some time now, New York City Mayor Eric Adams appears to be more open to the idea of allowing city employees to work from home than he was a year ago.
He pulled the plug on the idea of remote work for city employees in 2022, saying early during his tenure as mayor: "One thing that can’t happen — you can’t stay home in your pajamas all day. That’s not who we are as a city."
But now it seems Adams has evolved on the subject, acknowledging this week that "we are saying to our agencies come up with creative ways of having flexibility."
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Gov. Kathy Hochul said it has been a longer transition back to office work than anyone expected, as she too had predicted (if not demanded) a more robust return to work schedule. But now it sounds like she is opening up to the idea, whether she likes it or not.
"I think the mayor is simply acknowledging the reality. We have a shortage of workers especially in government," Hochul said, adding that a more robust office pattern could still arrive down the line. "I believe all this is transitional, it does not have to be the death sentence in five days a week ever again, but we are not quite there yet."
In a speech in the Garment District on Wednesday, she said that more offices could become housing — something badly needed in a city experiencing a shortage of affordable housing.
"There’s a lot of square feet here," she said.
Kathryn Wylde, of the pro-business Partnership for New York City, said the numbers tell the story.
"Fewer than 10 percent of office workers are back five days a week," she said. "I think the mayor is getting the message the world has changed."
Wylde added that unless an employer — including City Hall — offers a work from home option, the job vacancies may remain unfilled.
"We are going to have to work with employees, they are driving the bus here," said Wylde.
The change in opinion comes after a Bloomberg News study showed that the shift to remote work in Manhattan means the island's office workers are spending about $12 billion less every year than they did before the pandemic. Workers are spending about 30 percent less time in the office, which has cut their annual near-the-office spending on food, entertainment and the like by an average of nearly $4,700 per person, according to the outlet's analysis of data from Stanford University.
While the same is happening is other big cities, the cost on a per-person basis is more than 50 percent worse in NYC than anywhere else, Bloomberg found. The study tracks with other data sets that suggest, nearly three years after New York City's first COVID case, people simply have not returned to full-time in-office work.
However, some neighborhoods (mainly more residential ones) have seen a surprising boost as people who work from home pop out for lunch and shop at places not used to mid-day business.
