Amerikas Produktivitätsboom begann vor der KI, und ein Stanford-Ökonom, der den Großen Rücktritt entschlüsselt hat, sagt, dass die Arbeit von zu Hause aus der Grund dafür ist | Vermögen
https://fortune.com/2026/05/15/america-productivity-boom-stanford-economist-nicholas-bloom-remote-work-future/
45 Kommentare
Stating the obvious.
Someone tell that to my CEO who just this year brought us back to the office full time
Yet companies keep mandating RTO. The worst part is that there’s no reasoning with the people who make these decisions.
Seems like a complete market failure because so many companies are cutting WFH
If a company looks at the data it shows exactly that.
No shit, do they not think the 1.5 hours of unpaid driving time comes out of their productivity? Cause I’m not doing it for fun
So it’s got nothing to do with the hundreds of billions being released from balance sheets for AI infrastructure….
My wife just changed jobs, office 4 days a week wfh 1 day. Her productivity has dropped like a stone. Office politics, needless in person meetings, distractions, etc.
I’ve WFH since 2000, but I’ll go into one of our offices a few times a month. Everytime I go in I’m as productive as a brick. Only reason I go in is to just see people from time to time… then I immediately regret it. 🙂
it’s not about the money! it’s about the control. what incentive is there now to even care about a company when you know you’re training an ai to replace not just you but every human after you too? When this goes sideways will be our opportunity to demand better not just jump at their empty promises.
I am a mix of in the office and work from home and I am at least twice as productive at home.. constant interruptions in the office. Not to mention I can basically roll out of bed and start working from home vs. Spending two hours getting ready and driving to work and getting settled in before I start anything.
Corporations do not have to act reasonably or rationally. They can do contradictory things. They don’t even need to be real, they just have to fake it so the stocks go up.
Workers are most efficient when having flexible working conditions. Some in office, some at home, some mix of the two, but they need bodies in buildings, so “collaboration.”
But also, we’re actively working towards replacing everybody with AI, so *no* bodies in buildings.
But also, AI will make you a better worker? So use AI in everything you do.
But also, AI is making lots of people’s workloads more difficult because it doesn’t do the things it claims it can do. Use it anyway.
But also, gas, food and utilities are so expensive because of AI data centers and war, but you still have to come in, burn the fuel, and use the AI despite none of these things increasing your output, therefore we can’t increase your pay.
It’s a death spiral of a civilization.
I get less work done in the office than I do at home because I’m actually talking to my co workers
Obvious things that corporate overlords ignore for $100, Alex.
Who would have thought that not stressing out through commuting and shitty colleagues you’d produce more?
There can be an argument for RTO mandates, and Hybrid is a fair compromise. Vast majority of the time however? WFH is just the optimal approach. Save money on gas, save money on the building expenses, and with the right setup isn’t so different from working in the office.
But they’re not interested in optimal. Only what’s expedient. RTO mandates aren’t for culture. They’re thinly veiled attempts to make people quit in lieu of layoffs
They even did studies on the four day work week that showed it increased productivity. Employers would rather you work 12 hours in office every day even if it reduces productivity. Hmm
I remember one job they allowed staggered hours for a while. So you could come in early or late and leave early or late. Just not having to sit in traffic for hours was huge. I think the stress reduction from less of that even. But if didn’t last. I remember a manager at another place saying he was fine with give time. You can come in any time before seven and leave anytime after seven. Thought he was so funny. They don’t care is what I see most. It’s not about productivity.
I remember for years as a consultant I saw remote workers as a great option. Of course, depending on the work and workers. Different projects so not always the same. For parts where you are doing lots of heads down coding though it’s a no brainer. Multiple countries even as long as the work is good. In some cases where I was allowed and just was on site occasionally I have to think they saw the huge benefit every week. Flights, hotel, daily expenses on top of being distracted to much when on site made things less efficient not better.
It’s certainly not universal but for many cases remote work for large portions of projects is obviously better.
Gee, instead of driving 3 hours to and from the office, I could use that time to actually work. Who would’ve thought I’d be more productive? 🙃
If that was the case, wouldn’t that also have occured in other economies that are heavily service based in Europe for example? UK economy is even more service based than USA and the UK hasn’t has any productivity boom at all, same as most of Europe.
No fucking shit, but the capitalists forgot that increasing productivity over time is the best business model, not curring labor costs
Everybody knows that productivity went through the roof during COVID because everyone was working from home and there were no more work distractions or unnecessary interruptions. The only reason companies want employees back in the office is because middle managers realized they’re unnecessary. Employee’s working from home don’t need to be monitored or managed. They’ll actually get more work done more efficiently without management interrupting them.
Gaslighting
My employer wants us to push work on AI hard but most people can only access Claude models on the 2-3 days we wfh, because our office network admins are blocking it.
Wow who could have thought people would be more productive when the means of production are owned by the people?
Any worker could have told you that. Our entire company is remote and is way more productive that any in office company I’ve ever worked at. I mean it would be impossible for us to have an office since we’re scattered all over the world, but I’m reminded every day how ridiculous offices are for most work. Of course people who actually build things or do molecular research or otherwise have a real job, this is all moot. But for all of us office fakers pushing bits and bytes around, offices are completely obsolete.
Pretty much anyone in the know, knows. What’s concerning is how much the corporate media is invested in telling us otherwise.
I’m absolutely, 100% more productive working from home. There are fewer distractions. I can focus more and tune out the noise of an office.
I’m so much more productive not having to sit through 10+ hours of rush hour traffic per week. I clock on fully rested and not dreading a stressful commute. Given current prices, saves me around $150 per week in gas, and $75 in weekly parking. The company already did all meetings over Teams, and only really saw my coworkers in person maybe once a month at the odd half hour break room meetup. Absolutely no justification for going to an office to do my job, and only greater quality of work and quality of life to be had for remote working.
It’s like if you make life easier we become more productive.
I remember hearing CEOs and billionaires upset during Covid how people were feeling empowered and wanting WFH. It seems the all hands on deck for AI was their attempt to put us in our place
I went from a company that was 100% in the office all the time with zero flexibility to a company that sold their office when Covid hit and decided to pay workers more with that money and just let them work from home.
I couldn’t be happier.
I work for a company that has 60k+ employees at its main campus. We were all WFH until earlier this year, and assuming everybody now loses 2 hours due to traffic/getting ready each day, that’s a combined 13.6 human years lost every day or 5 millennia human years every single calendar year. That’s an insane amount of time wasted for society for something that surely doesn’t add the same amount of benefit.
Then if you think it costs let’s say an average of 10 dollars to afford transport (gas/etc/wear) each day, that’s $600k a day going into oil/energy companies and out of the pockets of workers. Nearly a quarter billion total each calendar year.
The return to office mandates move the financial toll from the companies to the employees.
Yes. We have numerous studies saying WFH is unquestionably better than in-office.
Any company stating you need to return to office doesn’t actually care about productivity and/or values their corporate real estate values more.
We were told to return to office 3 times a week a year ago and we were just told that it will be 4 days by the end of summer.
This has nothing to do with real estate investments. We are leasing the office building.
The executives don’t like to use technology, they want people physically sitting in their chairs in meetings.
**A survey has said that businesses that are not as profitable seem to want to bring everyone back to the office, but with the incorrect assumption that WFH is the reason for the bad financial state of the company.**
The reality is that the companies are usually in bad shape due to bad choices made by the executives…. The rank and file rarely has a say in choosing the direction of the business.
Getting rid of WFH right now does seem like the corporate version of Retailers cutting hours to encourage workforce reduction. When companies are laying off thousands of people monthly in 2026, and having to deal with state unemployment, it sure would make it easier on them if you just left….
> Companies argue in-person work increases collaboration, and Bloom agrees.
Thing is, collaboration hurts productivity. You can see it happen.
Does collaboration have some benefit that’s worth the cost?
[During WFH productivity actually went up. RTO has made it flatline](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/video/forced-rto-surprising-lessons-from-newest-data/).
> Data from 2024 through early 2026 confirms that while Work From Home (WFH) significantly boosted productivity in 2020–2023, enforced Return to Office (RTO) mandates have largely caused that surge to stagnate or flatline. Instead of yielding expected productivity gains, many RTO mandates have resulted in higher turnover and increased employee burnout.
> During the height of remote work (2020-2023), studies found that remote workers were about 5-13% more productive due to fewer interruptions, no commute, and improved work-life balance.
> As of 2026, research indicates that forced RTO mandates haven’t moved the needle on performance. Productivity has largely leveled off or dropped because of long commutes, rigid schedules, and reduced autonomy.
> Research suggests many leaders confuse „visibility“ (seeing employees in the office) with actual productivity. In fact, remote activity data shows that work still happens, just with more flexibility.
> Companies forcing RTO saw a 99% drop in employee job satisfaction, increased turnover, and higher recruiting costs
From a purely business and quality of life perspective it makes more sense. But some wealthy guys lose out on commercial real estate so the feudalistic system that must burn fuel and your time wins out.
It makes more sense with people more spread out. To everyone and everything except the feudal lords ad do nothings that need office politics to seem like they are doing something. WFH puts the focus on delivery, that is why productivity went up. RTO now you have this bullshit commute and office politics game that is super cliquey and really flatlines productivity.
You’d think during an energy crisis maybe WFH would be pushed as policy, if not for quality of life at least for cost reduction and reducing oil/gas usage. Instead the feudalist RTO pump is still present.
I stopped giving a shit at work because I despise being sent back to office. I give them the bare minimum now instead of going above and beyond.
Our economy has gone from production and sales metrics to vitality and marketing driving stock prices.
The whole system doesn’t work if value is not assigned to anything remotely tangible.
Everytime I see a Fortune article, they are always either stating the complete obvious or shilling for CEOs, no in-between
The CEO of my company talked so much shit about working from home. He finally said, „fine we’ll let the metrics speak for themselves.“ After three months of working from home, the dev teams had pushed out two quarters worth of features. I’ll give the guy credit, at least he stuck to his word. The whole company works from home more or less still.
It’d be sad/amusing if the work-from-office push is less about propping up real estate and more about people (like executives) having such poor social lives that they need work ’socializing.‘ The excuses around culture and collaboration or obviously false when most work teams are spread across the world and companies offshore as much as they can.
They didn’t care. They want us to suffer in traffic to burn gas and validate the infrastructure purchases on their P&L!
My company gets multiple fewer hours a day of work out of me than they used to because of RTO. The 3 hours a day I spend getting ready for work and commuting is time they no longer get any productivity out of me. When my boss commented on my reduction in output I told him they lost somewhere between 10-15 hours a week of work from me because they’re forcing me to commute. He hates the RTO too so he just laughed and said “serves them right” and told me he’d slowly reduce my deliverables so no one noticed the drop.
The easier it is for me to incorporate work into my life, the more work I will do. I’m more likely to put in an extra hour or more just because I can fit it in instead of all the time I have to waste doing the office song and dance.
Lol there was a productivity boom? When was that? All I can see is everything getting slower and shittier and more expensive.