Companies are predicting that employees will take months to return to the office, causing large cities to have high vacancy rates. Kristina Partsinevelos from FOX Business with more.
San Francisco leaders are concerned that a significant flight of tech workers from the city due to remote job opportunities could have a “powerful” effect on the city’s economy in the coming years.
In a report detailing the city’s five-year financial plan, officials pointed to “dramatic evidence of emigration,” including a 25% drop in apartment prices from one year to the next – heavily concentrated in areas where tech workers lived.
“This suggests that office workers, working remotely, are the group leading the exodus, not the low-income workers who are much more likely to be unemployed,” wrote the researchers. “Emigration, and not just working at home, is another consequence of the shift to remote office work during the pandemic.”
Although some companies – such as Twitter and Facebook – have committed themselves to the permanent flexibility of remote work, it is unclear what percentage of other workers will be asked to return to the office when the pandemic subsides.
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San Francisco leaders are warning that if workers are not forced to return to their downtown office buildings, this could have “serious” effects on the local economy.
“The private sector office activities that drive the city’s entire economy and the city’s tax revenue are located in the city center to access and build a highly qualified and specialized workforce that resides in the bay area,” said the leaders . “If it is no longer necessary to physically bring workers into the center’s offices – or for those workers to live in the bay area – then the consequences for the regional economy can be serious.”
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The city previously announced a 43% year-on-year decline in sales tax revenues during the pandemic, which San Francisco’s chief economist, Ted Egan, attributed to a flight of individuals from the city, rather than a decline in activity. due to the pandemic.
Egan told Fox News that while areas across California experienced a decline in sales tax revenues, other cities saw an increase in online sales – but San Francisco did not.
Data from moving company United Van Lines listed San Jose, California as one of the cities that saw the highest outflow of engines in 2020.
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