The Cost of Remote Working: How New York City Is Losing $12 Billion a Year

Remote working has drastically changed the daily rhythm of New York and is costing the city dearly. The presence in the offices has been reduced by 30%, because more and more employees only go through them three days a week: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. From Friday to Monday they and their money stay at home, teleworking.

This new work routine is costing the New York city more than $12 billion a year that workers used to spend on bars, restaurants and entertainment, according to an analysis by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom who publishes Bloomberg News.

The report explains that each worker is leaving to spend an average of 4,700 dollars less per year. And this directly influences the city’s coffers, which have also seen their income decrease.

The city that never slept now rests fitfully

France 24 wanted to see it firsthand and made a route through the city on a Monday, a day of the week that before the pandemic was quite chaotic due to the arrival of workers from the suburbs who joined the regular ones from Manhattan. . At 7:30 a.m. local time, the metro is almost empty, if we compare it with the use made of it in 2019 (according to MTAthe New York subway has 2.4 million daily users, a decline from the 5.4 million people who used it each day before the pandemic).

On her way to Midtown, a neighborhood in the upper part of Manhattan, she misses the bustle of cars, workers, and vendors. France 24 arrives at the home of Julia Herbera, a 28-year-old Spaniard who has converted the guest room of her house into an office with two computer screens, a large lamp and a sturdy table with enough space to feel at home. office.

“They offered me a job that was in Texas and I really liked it, but my husband has a good position here (in New York) and we didn’t want to leave, so they allowed me to work remotely. I am very happy, because I have more time and I only have to go to the office that is in Austin once a week”, Julia explains to France 24 from her comfortable apartment in the middle of Manhattan.

In addition, he assures that working from home allows him to better combine his personal life with his professional life “because I waste less time getting ready, going to work since everything is far away in New York”, and he can also play sports, “which makes me feel good “, he confesses to us.

The economic impact of teleworking

Some businesses do not even open their doors on Mondays because the accounts no longer go out, and other companies have even canceled services in the Big Apple. Like the bus company DeCamp Bus Lines, which as of April 7 will no longer offer the route to and from New York with New Jersey due to lack of passengers.

As the pandemic has eased, the company “has struggled to win back commuters as work-from-home, remote and flextime have severely reduced daily trips to New York,” the company said. in a statement to its clients, but still “monthly ridership averages 20% or less of pre-Covid-19 levels.”

The money that DeCampus Bus Lines loses is the money saved by users like Ana Granados, who has lived in New York for 20 years and says that teleworking allows her to save a lot of money every month. “Only in transport I save 50% a month, plus what you save by not having to eat out. In the end, it’s 200 or 300 dollars a month that you don’t spend,” he told France 24 shortly before inviting the team to his offices in the heart of the Soho neighborhood.

When we enter, everything is extremely clean and shiny, few people pass through here, as Ana explains, “we can work remotely two days a week, so most people choose to do it Monday and Friday. Monday is fine because that’s how you organize the week from home calmly and Friday also because you can finish earlier”.

Not even the famous financial district of the Big Apple is what it used to be. The classic executives that used to fill the streets of Wall Street have now been replaced by tourists and, in this, the strategy of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has a lot to do with it. Faced with the lack of housing in the city, Adams has proposed to take advantage of empty offices and turn them into apartments, something that the city does lack and is shooting up rental prices.