Job Cuts Are Sending a Chill Through the Remote Work World

A sluggish US labor market for white-collar employees is fueling pressure to return to the office.

Employees are feeling more pressure to return to the office.

Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg
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The in-office perks didn’t lure them back. Those all-staff emails? The warnings were easy to ignore.

It’s the layoffs — increasingly targeted at remote workers — that are changing the calculus on working from home. Since the pandemic, many professional workers have had leverage in the battle over office attendance, as the flexibility to skip commutes for more sleep or time with family took hold. But a cooling white-collar labor market is having a chilling effect as companies increasingly scale back work-from-home options.