The exaggerated triumph of work from home:the workplace is not dead and (for most of us) is here to stay

Many analysts argue that working from home (WFH) is now a permanent feature of our economies and the workplace as we knew it before COVID is dead. Some even predict the decline of the city centre, the end of crowded commuter trains, and the loss of innovation clusters. However, using novel and previously unexplored population data, Riccardo Crescenzi, Mara Giua, and Davide Rigo found that the diffusion of WFH was possibly exaggerated due to many studies’ strong assumptions of technology adoption and focus on big cities, which overlooks the practical barriers to WFH adoption for the less dynamic segments of the economy. They write that smaller companies and “poor” regions remain the big losers of the digital revolution.