Half of In-Office Workers Say Their Jobs Feel Remote, NY Fed Finds

Companies pushed return-to-office mandates hard. The payoff, according to a new New York Fed survey, has been Zoom calls from a cubicle. Researchers found 48.8% of workers reported no in-person meetings at all on their most recent in-office day — not with teammates, not with anyone.

Nearly 71% said at least one teammate was missing from the office on those days. Half had no meeting where every participant showed up in person. More than a third skipped both in-person and hybrid meetings entirely. And 37% sat through at least one virtual meeting with people in the same building.

The paper comes from NY Fed research economist Natalia Emanuel and University of Virginia professor Emma Harrington. They surveyed 1,835 college-educated workers in September — deliberately, to keep the estimate conservative since remote work dips between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Their takeaway: a startling chunk of the workforce is doing what they call 'in-office remote work.'

Separate Fortune 500 badge-swipe data shows nearly half of corporate employees have at least one teammate out on their in-office days. BLS time-use data says Americans now spend more time physically alone on office days than before the pandemic. Gallup polling puts worker sentiment at a 15-year low.

The causes stack up: teams spread across more offices, employees no-showing mandates, employers not enforcing them strictly. Researchers quote Zoom CEO Eric Yuan's own 2023 admission that real debate is hard on the platform. Their dry conclusion: if office debates happen over Zoom too, the office isn't buying much.

Researchers caution the data doesn't capture non-teammate relationships or client meetings. They also aren't telling bosses to ditch mandates — they say enforcing attendance is what delivers the face-to-face contact workers actually want. One in four workers is now fully remote, per BLS data, a figure the researchers say understates how isolated the rest feel.