There’s a hidden cost to working from home, said Megan Cerullo in CBSNews.com. “Americans routinely say they relish the ability” to do their job remotely, a perk that’s expanded dramatically since the pandemic. But the often lonely nature of working from home can take a toll on mental health, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The study found that from 2011 to 2024, remote workers saw “a 58% rise in hours spent alone compared with in-office workers.” They also became “significantly more likely to go a full day without any human contact”—no chats with colleagues, no after-hours socializing with friends. Perhaps because of that isolation, remote workers “visited mental-health-care providers more frequently than non-remote workers and were more likely to rely on prescription psychiatric medication.” Remote work is often credited with “increased job satisfaction and better work-life balance,” but this darker flip side is “worth considering.”
Working remotely “isn’t for everyone,” said Kate B. Odell in The Wall Street Journal. But for working moms, it has been “the biggest innovation since the dishwasher.” Blunting the traditional trade-off between paid labor and family has allowed millions of women “to contribute their skills, earn money,” and still “be a primary influence on their children.” The demands on working moms will always be high. And the women working from home now “have to work harder to develop relationships with colleagues,” and often the “laptop is on at night and before dawn.” But “not being in traffic at 5 p.m. on weekdays” may be a worthwhile compromise.
For recent grads, the boom in remote work could be worsening an already bleak job market, said Emma Ockerman in Yahoo. Another recent New York Fed study found that companies are “more reluctant to hire less-experienced workers” for remote openings, because of how difficult it can be “to train new workers from afar.” As evidence, the researchers note that unemployment rates have increased “particularly fast among young workers in occupations that can easily be performed remotely,” but have dropped slightly for older workers who perform the same roles.
There’s still no replacing the office as “a petri dish of human interaction,” said Renée Loth in The Boston Globe. Sharing a workspace means you have to live with “people with different communication styles or work ethics,” as well as learn “how to interpret subtle cues from body language or vocal tone.” You can’t get these life lessons over Zoom or Slack. We can already see the “shriveling of workplace etiquette” that has transpired in the few years since the pandemic. Just as kids struggled with social development during Covid’s isolation, we’ve learned that “adults also need to play well with others, share the cookies, and not throw a tantrum over a bad report card.”
It can be lonely working from home
