Fewer people are working remotely in Richmond
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Richmonders are still working from home in droves, but in smaller numbers than at the pandemic peak.
Driving the news: In metro Richmond, 18.7% of workers were working from home as of 2022, down from 23% in 2021, per new Census Bureau figures released last month.
- Yes, but: That's up significantly from the 5.8% of locals who were working from home in 2019 before the pandemic.
Why it matters: The spike in remote workers has changed the way Richmonders live, from commuting habits to downtown office life to who lives in Richmond.
The big picture: Workers in America's biggest, most competitive cities aren't giving up the flexibility and savings — in both time and gas money — of working from home, Axios' Sam Baker and Simran Parwani report.
Zoom out: Overall, 15% of the U.S. worked from home last year — but the numbers are much higher on both the East and West coasts, and in other large metro areas.
- Boulder, Colorado, had the highest share of remote workers of any metro area last year, at 32%. Denver wasn't far behind.
- Just over 25% of the Washington, D.C., metro area workforce is remote — the 6th highest rate of any city, and higher than any state.
The other side: Mississippi has the lowest share of remote workers in the U.S. at just 5.5%, and the Southeast generally is well below the national average.
- Even so, every state has more remote workers now than before the pandemic began.
- And even after two years, the trend line is barely moving. Nationwide, the share of people working from home declined by less than 3 percentage points from 2021 to 2022, according to the Census figures.
What we're watching: The work-from-home revolution is most entrenched in big cities with large concentrations of office buildings and, pre-pandemic, their downtown downtown economies survived because their office buildings were full.
- Any number of large employers, from big banks in New York all the way up to the federal government, have tried to get their employees back to the office. For the most part, they haven't been very successful.
- The solution in these cities is more likely to come from ambitious redevelopment projects — converting office towers into residential buildings and central business districts into mixed-use neighborhoods.
- That work is complex, difficult and extremely expensive, but it's already underway in several cities.