Nearly a third of San Francisco workers worked from home in 2022

Almost a third of San Francisco's metro-area workers were working from home as of 2022, per recent Census figures.

The big picture: Workers in America's biggest, most competitive cities aren't giving up the flexibility and savings of working from home — both in time and gas money, Axios' Sam Baker and Simran Parwani report.

Zoom out: Overall, 15% of the U.S. worked from home last year, with numbers much higher on both the East and West coasts.

• San Francisco and San José both were in the top 10 cities with the number of people working from home— though their main rival for tech jobs — Austin, Texas — was even higher.

Of note: While the Southeast generally is well below the national average, every state has more remote workers now than in 2019.

What we're watching: The work-from-home revolution is most entrenched in big cities as they tend to have a concentration of office buildings.

• The solution in these cities is likely to come from ambitious redevelopment projects — like converting office towers into residential buildings or central business districts into mixed-use neighborhoods.
• That work is complex, difficult and extremely expensive, but it's already underway in several cities.