Working From Home: Not the future?

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many office workers shifted to working from home. I constantly heard on Bloomberg about how this would become the future of work. Interestingly, Bloomberg (Aug 10) recently found out the following: 

In July, roughly 25% of managers and professional workers teleworked at some point because of the pandemic, the lowest since the government started tracking the data in May 2020. It’s a clear sign that the age-old work compact is mostly intact, and that the office model is far from defunct.

The July number is down from 41% in January and 57% in May of last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tallies the number of employed who teleworked or worked at home for pay at any time in the month because of the novel coronavirus.

. . . The breakdown of the data is telling. About half of all those in “computer and mathematical” occupations worked from home; 37.9% of all those in business and finance worked from home; and almost 37% of all those in law worked from home. No other categories come close.

. . . And it’s important to keep in mind that the finance and legal professions aren’t “everybody.” Finance accounts for around 6% of the working population, and the law around 1.2%. Those in computing and mathematics account for another 4%.

The article mentions that the 25% is based on people who worked at least one day from home. So my interpretation is that some of even those individuals might be in the office 4 days a week. 

It seems that the re-definition of work isn't really going to happen in the near term -- at least for the vast majority of workers. A question is: how long will corporations such as Apple stick with the policy that workers can work from home two days a week? Will they eventually ditch that strategy for the majority of their workers?

And are some companies already trying to indirectly entice workers to come back to work with negative incentives should they decide to work from home? USA Today (Aug 11) reports on the following about Google and pay:

Google employees who choose to work from home permanently may face pay cuts, according to a report by Reuters.

Workers with longer commutes were reported to receive the highest pay cuts. Reuters found that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut, an hour from Google's New York office, would be paid 15% less working from home, but a colleague living in New York would see no cut.

Is working from home really worth a 15% pay cut?