The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Worker

Working from home, a new study in the journal Science says, leaves employees lonelier, sadder, and more likely to be depressed. So does that mean everybody get back to your office desks so morale improves? The authors looked at rates of mental distress among people in jobs that could be done remotely or not before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and concluded that remote work is responsible for about a third of the overall increase, with the worst results for people who live alone. But before-and-after is not cause-and-effect. Isolation is real. Chaining everyone to a desk for friendship is not the only fix. Chapters: 00:01:44 Announcements 00:02:27 Retcon: Immigrants work in every occupation; occupational crowding; sports betting scandals 00:07:21 Terms & Conditions: Procedural; remotable vs. non-remotable jobs 00:10:00 Big Pilcrow: Does Work From Home Make Us Sad? 00:37:21 Executive Orders: News alerts; more brass! 00:38:28 Spiritual Sponsors: Animal conservation workers; Andrew Bird We are entirely listener supported! Join the Optimist donors here: https://optimisteconomy.com Watch clips on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. We’re also on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Want full video? See above about donating. Chat with other Optimists on Substack. Sale on T-shirts: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders? Send them to [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Well, happy Tuesday, optimists.

• 0:02Robin Rauzi?

  Hello.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, optimists, now we don't seem so crazy, huh?

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Turns out optimism and the economy and, you know, it's, I'm just, whatever, you know, maybe we were like a year and a half early. Uh, okay, so obviously we got some election results that, um...

• 0:22Robin Rauzi?

  Maybe change some attitudes out there.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Change some attitudes, change some perspectives. We are not going to talk about it in today's episode. We, as you know, we record two weeks in advance, and so this is, uh, the episode we recorded last week.

• 0:34Robin Rauzi?

  Which is strangely called Sad From Home.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  It's actually about being sad, so that's, talk about missing the moment.

• 0:41Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  This was our time to shine, and man, did we not...

• 0:43Robin Rauzi?

  Did we, yeah.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Did we not piece it together? However, we, we will talk about the election in some way, shape, or form, even if it's just to be, I don't know, beaming as we, as we speak about economic policy.

• 0:57Robin Rauzi?

  Did you say be mean?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Beaming, beaming, you know, like glowing.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Hello, and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm economist Katherine Anne Edwards.

• 1:12Robin Rauzi?

  And I'm editor Robin Rousey.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  On this show, we believe the US economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Today, we will be talking about how sad Robin and I are, because we work from home, and apparently, working from home...

• 1:33Robin Rauzi?

  Makes you sad.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Makes you really sad.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Production, also sad.

• 1:39Robin Rauzi?

  Everyone's sad. This is the saddest team ever here at Optimist Economy.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  The saddest remote team ever. Oh, but first announcements.

• 1:46Robin Rauzi?

  So, first of all, thank you, everyone, for the Thanksgiving scenarios. Don't send us anymore, we're done.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Full up, we're all full up.

• 1:54Robin Rauzi?

  Full up, got so many. Uh, second, I want to thank Liz from Seattle, who became an eternal optimist donor on Substack. That was fantastic. Also, we've been noticing more international downloads since, uh, someone went on a big show, including 62 downloads from Mozambique. So if you're, if you're, if you're the listener from Mozambique, reach out, we want to talk to you.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we want to know why you're listening to us.

• 2:19Robin Rauzi?

  To this show, we do.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  I mean, not in like a judgmental way, just a very curious way.

• 2:25Robin Rauzi?

  Very curious.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Very curious.

• 2:27Robin Rauzi?

  Next up is...

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Retcon.

• 2:29Robin Rauzi?

  Retcon, which is half our show.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  It might be this time. Um, okay, so first things first, we got to go back to the beginning when we talked about immigration, two episodes, three episodes ago, doesn't matter, we talked about immigration, you remember that. There are two things about immigrants that I didn't make clear. Um, one is, based on the way that we talked about immigrants, you would have been forgiven for assuming that they all work blue collar or low wage jobs. And that is very, very far from the case. Immigrants have every occupation, every level of educational attainment, there are over-representation or high concentration of immigrants in certain occupations, but there are many of those that are at the top of like the income and wage distribution in addition to being closer to the bottom.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  And so that was, you know, it's so hard when you're talking about such a diverse set of people that do so much for our economy, it's almost like it makes no god sense to target them so cruelly. But we were a little loose in not making it clear that they are throughout our labor market and not just, say, three types of workers.

• 3:35Robin Rauzi?

  And I think that was really on me. I think that sort of when you're talking, I'm trying to give examples of how I would interpret that if I listened to it. And we did talk about the industries that we're feeling, the pinch in particular, and those did also tend to be blue collar industries, childcare, construction.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:53Robin Rauzi?

  But, point taken.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Point taken. Another thing that, that I actually got chided by a labor economist, a fellow practitioner, for not bringing up, when bringing up how people in the US sort into occupations, is that there's a very kind of old concept in labor economics called occupational crowding. And that one of the reasons why people who are of different genders, or different races, or of different nativity, end up in certain occupations is because they're forced there because of discrimination. One of the like OG female economists, her name was Barbara Bergman, and she developed the concept of occupational crowding. And she originally developed it to describe the wages in professions of black men, and

• 4:38Speaker 00

  why even if they had enough education to say be a manager, they were discriminated against, and therefore put like in a sub-managerial position. And their overcrowding in one occupation would make them cheaper, and drive down their wages, and then keeping the high-paid occupation exclusive would make it higher-paid. And so it was like a self-perpetuating cycle of inequality that is based off of discrimination of how people are hired. So you could think of this as, this is like a very short-lived show, that was on Amazon Prime, and it was a show about when the female reporters at Newsweek...

• 5:12Robin Rauzi?

  Oh.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  ...filed a massive lawsuit for gender discrimination. And what they show in the show is that all of these women have like undergraduate degrees in journalism, and they're all hired as journalist assistants.

• 5:25Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, researchers.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, or researchers, and then the men are hired as actual journalists. So this is a perfect illustration. Oh, it's Good Girls Revolt, Andy, what a catch. Anyway, I got chided for not bringing up occupational crowding, and a chance to drop a line about Barbara Bergman.

• 5:40Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, Good Girls Revolt, actually created by a woman named Dana Calvo, who was a reporter at the LA Times.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Really?

• 5:47Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  All right. The next kind of quick retcon is that we did not bring up in the gambling episode, one of the massive, massive risk of encouraging sports betting, was that it is going to lead to player scandals. And it is already happening, it will only happen more in the future, this...

• 6:08Robin Rauzi?

  By player scandals, you mean players betting on their own games, à la...

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Or throwing a game, or throwing even like a pitch in a game, or like one shot in a game, uh, in order to hit a bet. So it's not like you have to throw the whole game, you know, this is what these small bets...

• 6:24Robin Rauzi?

  Which is why we had that law in the first place.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Yes, but it's not like you have to throw the whole game, like I need you to lose game seven of the World Series, because now there's all these like little prop bets that come up, that's like, I need you to have three walks in the fourth, or something like that. Like it just, it opens up their ability to like, still be competitive and win, but make money off of some minor behavior in the, in the middle of the game.

• 6:45Robin Rauzi?

  Gross.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Which I think is happening, according to my aunt, who I talked to just before we started to groan, um, and it's only going to get worse, and it's gonna, it's, it's like player entrapment. And this is an endorsement to go watch Eight Men Out.

• 6:58Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, it's a great movie.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Another great procedural.

• 7:01Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I don't know if it's a procedural, I think you and I have different definitions of procedural.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Maybe, you know...

• 7:06Robin Rauzi?

  Under terms and conditions, we can discuss what a procedural is.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Maybe, I'm like, it's not high drama or comedy, it's gotta be, that's all that's left.

• 7:16Robin Rauzi?

  It's not a sitcom, it must be a procedural.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:20Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Terms and conditions?

• 7:22Robin Rauzi?

  I don't, I got nothing.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna...

• 7:24Robin Rauzi?

  Except apparently a procedural.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Procedural, okay.

• 7:27Robin Rauzi?

  A procedural is generally a TV show, where the same thing, there's a formula of what happens. So, cop shows, Law and Order is the quintessential procedural, ER, right? There are a series of medical cases that you work through in the course of the episode. That's what a procedural is.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:46Robin Rauzi?

  And you can always watch it, and it will always be the same procedure.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Okay, but then what's a procedural movie?

• 7:53Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  I thought like a procedural on like the movie side was one that's like, it doesn't have a ton of like romantic relationships, or even personal relationships, it's almost like a TikTok of like, it's all plot explaining something, maybe...

• 8:09Robin Rauzi?

  That could be, I mean, that's, that's probably a fair use of that. But I mean, I think it's a much more common term for television.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, okay. 12 Angry Men, The Verdict. Okay, well, we'll, my term and condition is, is actually related not to, not to movies, but the thing that we'll talk about on this show, which is remotable and non-remotable. So, there are hundreds and hundreds of occupations in the US, and occupations is what we use to describe what the worker does, the industry is what we use to describe what the business does. So hundreds and hundreds of occupations in the US, some of them are what we would call remotable, meaning that they could be done in person, but they also could be done completely remote. And then there's going to be a set of jobs that are non-remotable, there's really no

• 9:00Speaker 00

  way to do them in an external setting, you have to be on-site. And then there's going to be some jobs that are, it's like tough to say, maybe a version...

• 9:08Robin Rauzi?

  Semi-remotable.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Semi-remotable, remotable, non-remotable, semi-remotable. So like something like, you know, a nurse...

• 9:15Robin Rauzi?

  Got to be on-site.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Yes, but then we also have telehealth and consultancies, and so in theory, you could have a nurse talking to someone remotely, hearing about their conditions, and giving them recommendations, that wouldn't necessarily require an in-person visit. So there's a gray area between what's remotable, some it's obvious, some it's not so obvious. So the idea of remote occupations and being remotable, this, this is the future of our labor market, and it's one that, uh, yeah, we'll talk about. I was actually about to start talking, and I was like, stop, we have to take a dramatic pause before the big pill crow. So you'll hear more when we come back.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Okay, well, we are back. We have paused dramatically and procedurally, and we are talking about the big pill crow, which is, does work from home make us sad? Ergo, everyone should work forever in person.

• 10:14Robin Rauzi?

  Right, right.

• 10:18Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, you know, the pandemic really did just enable this crazy amount of research on work from home, like, looking at what happened before, during, and after. I would debate whether or not they got after enough, like, enough time, but I started to look around to see, oh, well, what did we find? I mean, it's endless, the amount of research done on remote work.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  We were prompted by this because there were a series of news reports and op-eds around a research finding that was published in Science earlier this summer called "Home Alone: Remote Work, Isolation, and Mental Health." The authors of this research paper have since, I think they have published or are publishing a book about work from home, and the kind of headline from the study is, "Work from Home Makes People Lonely and Sad."

• 11:10Robin Rauzi?

  And depressed.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Depressed. Lonely, sad, depressed.

• 11:12Robin Rauzi?

  Specifically, mental health interventions required. Higher rates of talking to mental health professionals, higher rates of antidepressant prescriptions, I think, too.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  So their headline article in the New York Times, that obviously caught both Robin and I's eyes were, "We Liked Remote Work. Then, We Looked at the Data."

• 11:35Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, just for the record, no one gets to write their own headlines. They did not write that headline.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, I was like, I'm gonna forgive them for this, because I don't get to write mine, and some of mine that come up in Bloomberg are crazy.

• 11:44Robin Rauzi?

  And there were probably multiple headlines tried out before they settled on that one.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. "Then, We Looked at the Data."

• 11:51Robin Rauzi?

  We Looked at the Data.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  It's such a, like, of-this-moment headline.

• 11:55Robin Rauzi?

  It's a clickbaity headline.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  The finding that work from home makes people lonely, sad, depressed, in that order, and that their conclusion is basically, you need to have people back in the office. To me, I was like, well, an economist wrote that conclusion.

• 12:09Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, there was like, a Fed economist or a Harvard Business School person, and I was like, oh, my lord.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Worker bots, march on back in, that's the only answer.

• 12:23Robin Rauzi?

  The last line really, it's pretty wild. And again, you know, I'm an editor, somebody else maybe wrote this.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Oh, do you want me to read it in the dramatic voice, or do you want to do it?

• 12:33Robin Rauzi?

  Go with your dramatic voice, Catherine.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  "Twenty-six years..." No, I can't do it. Actually, I want to be able to make it through the whole way through. Okay. So, "Twenty-six years after Robert Putnam warned that Americans were bowling alone, many of us are now typing alone. To ensure that work remains a source of connection, we must change not only where we work, but also how we work, so that our jobs continue to bring us together."

• 13:00Speaker 00

  I mean, so I'm a labor economist, we talk about policy, you're an optimist, let's make people happy. Do we need to chain people to their desks so that they have friends? Like, what are we doing here?

• 13:08Robin Rauzi?

  I know, I know. I think I was dubious of this from the start, in part because, as you say, they're economists. I mean, I don't think, don't get me wrong, I don't think that their heart is in the wrong place, right?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:20Robin Rauzi?

  Like, I want to 100% believe that they, first of all, do good research, and I think the question is, what that really means in terms of remedies, and who remedies it, and how, right?

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:33Robin Rauzi?

  The comments section on the New York Times op-ed version of this was brutal. I mean, it was just, people were like, "This is, quote, 'garbage from shills for late-stage capitalism.'"

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, people hated this.

• 13:49Robin Rauzi?

  Most people hated it. Not everyone, but most people hated it. So I went back and I read this, the original study, and I thought, well, but why, why do I want to trust what economists think about mental health?

• 14:04Speaker 00

  So, let me explain the study. They basically divide every occupation in the US into remotable and non-remotable jobs.

• 14:13Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  And they look at the number of hours spent alone, not at home, but spent alone, before and after the pandemic. And the pandemic is the shock where, you know, you send something like 40% of the American workforce goes to work from home, afterwards, some of them didn't come back. And it changed the way that some professions and offices are managed, that you have a permanent increase in the work from home. So they, they look at the remotable and non-remotable groups, on average.

• 14:40Robin Rauzi?

  There's two very large pools of workers, over many, many years.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  It's a massive study, so it's, it's got like, I think, five years at least before the pandemic, they throw out 20 and 21, and then they look at the three years after that, so 22, 23, and 24.

• 14:55Robin Rauzi?

  I think it's 2011 to 2024, I think it's 10 years before the pandemic.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  I mean, it varied, like, very long pre-treatment period. And so you've got these two groups of workers, and all these years before, they don't have really any differences in the number of hours spent alone, there's not a delineation. And then, after the pandemic, and the years after, you start to see that the remotable group has, on average, they work from home more, and on average, they spend more hours alone, which leads to, on average, an association with being lonely, being sad, and then later, mental health. As for, as for moderating factors, they look separately of whether or not the person

• 15:42Speaker 00

  who is working, like, they look for moderating factors, and one of them is if you live alone.

• 15:48Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  So, living alone and working from home was the combination that was associated with the worst outcomes.

• 15:55Robin Rauzi?

  Right. And even in the years between 2011 and 2020, you know, people who had remotable jobs and lived alone had much higher percentages of spending the whole day alone. But it shot way up during the pandemic, and then it didn't come back down to where it had been.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, I think, maybe what the New York Times comments section got right is that they, it's really hard to, I mean, these are just averages, and they're not, it's not necessarily a causal study, which is why it wasn't published in an economics journal. Because in an economics journal, we would say that this is just means, we can't make conclusions from this, it doesn't have a causal identification. Before and after are not the same thing as cause and effect. They showed before and after, they didn't show cause and effect.

• 16:46Robin Rauzi?

  They say they controlled for all of these other things, and that their findings suggest that working from home is responsible for something like 30% of the decline in mental health. I mean, it was a pretty bold claim.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  I mean, maybe I'm gonna go back to economics jail, where I have like, a permanent cell, but I read through the whole study, and they didn't, they had rationale, they had, I mean, they didn't have a causal effect. They're kind of using the pandemic as a causal change, that more people went to remote work afterwards, but they, like, okay, so here's one causal story. There's a random shock. All these people are sent home and work from home, and stay there. As a result of being at home and working from home, they then become lonely, and then they have mental health issues as a result. And it's a pure causal chain, where like, you get the assignment to work from home, and the result causally is mental health, okay? Other causal chain, you are a lonely, depressed person, and you

• 17:45Speaker 00

  don't like being around people or having to make small talk, so you find remote work, or remote work occupation or opportunity, so that you stay at home. The result on one kind of story is the cause of the other story. They can't say that that's not what's happening. So when I say I don't think it's a causal study, it's because they can't tell me, can you show me from your data that remote work is causing loneliness and mental health issues? Can you show me in some type of identification strategy that it is not lonely and depressed people that are drawn to remote work, and therefore end up there? So they're saying that because of the pandemic, more people were at home, but I don't think that excludes

• 18:28Speaker 00

  the idea that the people who stayed at home might have been lonely. You know, like, did I explain that well?

• 18:35Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I think you explained it well. I, I mean, my kind of question is really whether, looking at this period of time, they're like, we excluded 2020 and 2021, and I don't think that's enough to exclude. I think that there were so many hangovers from the pandemic and the changes to work that I, I find that hard to believe. I'm looking to see what they, what they actually say in their, yeah. "Our estimates, published in Science this month, indicate that remote work explains a third of the deterioration in mental health between 2011 and 2024."

• 19:17Speaker 00

  That's, I just don't think they can claim that. I don't know. I hate, I hate like piling on other people. Like they found something. Like I think there's something there. Um, but it's, that is a really big conclusion. There's an economist at Wisconsin and I could just hear him saying, that's a rather heroic conclusion.

• 19:36Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  I mean, if this were a paper that were presented in front of me and I was in an economics seminar, and this was a labor seminar and they were saying, here's their study. I think the questions that I would ask them would be, you know, you need to show me every year separately because I'm not convinced 2022 isn't a year to throw out. And what any economics journal article would require would be to say, you need to throw out 2022 and show me the results again. So I can be determined that 2022 isn't influencing the results.

• 20:07Robin Rauzi?

  Well, I guess what they say in the actual paper is the results persist when controlling for occupations, exposure to AI and other things. We do not find similar mental health deterioration for workers who were recently but not currently employed in remotable jobs, bolstering the argument that our, our results stem from the working arrangements themselves. The analyzed period saw a general increase in mental distress as I think we would expect from, I don't know, everything that happened around that time, but their analysis suggests remote work accounts for about a third of that increase. And it was far, far worse again for people who were working from home and lived alone.

• 20:47Robin Rauzi?

  People who lived with family also had some increase, but it was not nearly the leap.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I just, I cannot believe they didn't divide it by gender. Like I, I read this article and I was like, uh, show me male, female.

• 21:04Robin Rauzi?

  They were just using such giant groups of, um.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Well, they say they use the American time used to study. That has male and female. The general social survey, which they also use has male and female. This is, this is my thing that this was because it was written in a science journal. It's written in the science journal way. And I'm like, where is my section? Econ papers have a section. I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Where is this section? So I think, again, we're not trying to like pile on these researchers as being bad, but they make a pretty incredible conclusion. And I think the issue you and I have is with the conclusion that like, we need to go to jobs for everything.

• 21:39Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  But even then, it's just worth pointing out, I really don't buy their case. I think their case is probably true to some degree, but it's, this is a really tough time to look at it because there's so much going on in the world. You still have localities that have COVID restrictions into 2022. I know because I was living in one. You don't know the cause and effect and who chooses to work remotely versus not. There's definitely a big difference. Like the graph is really stark, but the big problem is that like, is the conclusion that we all need to go back to work?

• 22:11Robin Rauzi?

  Right. Go back to the office.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  We all need to go back to the office and they bring up things that like we've talked about before. Like you should have the right to work from home. You should be able to request this, especially if you're like coming back from a medical leave or coming back from paid leave. And this is kind of a case that's like, actually it'll make you sad.

• 22:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think this is true without beds, but it's probably also true with research that kind of how you frame your questions depends a little bit on who you think your audience is, right? And so I think for these particular researchers, while in the New York Times was everybody, the real audience is business owners. It's big companies. And so they're writing to say, you know, not, hey, look, we're going to give you the scientific rationale for forcing return to office policies. I think they're writing to say like, you really need to pay attention to what your remote work policies, what those effects are going to have on your employees.

• 23:10Robin Rauzi?

  Fine. But I also think that, that because that's their audience, the suggested solutions are via your employer as opposed to solutions that are like, yeah, maybe we actually have a social isolation problem that we've known about for a long time.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  26 years, as they point out from bowling alone. You know, from someone who has like a relatively lonely occupation, like if I'm writing a research paper for a journal and I'm a, just an economist working, I don't necessarily need to talk to someone.

• 23:44Robin Rauzi?

  To do your job.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, to do my job at an office right now. And I would not need to talk to any of my coworkers for days at a time. But it's, it kind of struck me as they were coding this, that if I was at an office next to people, I wasn't working alone. When really I'm always working alone, but sometimes I talk to people while getting coffee. And I bet that talking to people while getting coffee is super important.

• 24:06Robin Rauzi?

  It is. And they say that it's like, if you were working from home and, uh, lived alone, did you go out and buy coffee? You weren't commuting? Like you were just literally not being around other humans. And, you know, I think you and I have talked before that they just being in the space with other humans is in fact, you know, good for your mental health. I think that that's understandable. I think my question is whether we put it on employers to fix that problem.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  And there's a real parallel here with retirement.

• 24:34Robin Rauzi?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Sometimes retirement looks like more of a shove out and like something bad happens and you can't go back or you lose your job. There's a lot of retirement that looks like that. And then there's retirement of like, well, I'm at the end. I have enough money to live. I'm going to go enjoy my grandkids, but you don't, you actually, it's a massive mental health risk to retire. People also end up lonely.

• 24:55Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. And nobody says, well, we shouldn't let people retire or.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like you need to work till 70 because that'll make you happier. Like, I don't know. Feel like there are other options than just work until you die because that's where you get the good mental health data. So what made me like convinced of like intuitively, I think they're hitting on something is because when people are separated from work in the U.S., when it's unemployment, when it's like having to leave because of a caregiving responsibility, when it's retirement and now like working from home even, they all show a degree of disconnect and mental health. If you were not like at a place doing a job, because people get a lot from being at a place, doing a job and make friends there.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  But that doesn't mean that like the policy response is like, so keep him there. Don't let him go.

• 25:49Robin Rauzi?

  There's probably an economics word for this, but I think the other thing is this is sort of a snapshot in time and that people's need to work from home also shifts over time in their careers. What a person needs in terms of their ability to work from home changes depending on what, what else might be happening in their lives.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:09Robin Rauzi?

  Because the differences were so big among people who also lived alone. I mean, it would be like saying, well, people shouldn't live alone. But you know, people, maybe people want to live alone. You know, anecdote is not data, but despite perhaps what our personalities seem like on this show, I'm actually a very extroverted person. When I left college, I had studied writing and I thought that I wanted to be a writer in college. And I realized very quickly while I was in college that it was too, too much of an isolating job for me. And that I really loved being in newsrooms with lots of people around and interacting with people. And so I went into journalism and I, I didn't do it for the money. So when I left journalism and started working for myself and by myself,

• 26:54Robin Rauzi?

  I knew that about myself and I made accommodations because I knew that I would be unhappy and get stir crazy and cabin fever and be unable to focus if I didn't have enough external interaction with people. And, you know, maybe I have overdone it at times when I've been in two book clubs and two choirs and multiple other commitments on boards and, you know, now I have a podcast to take care of my time. But, um, I think people are pretty self-aware. You know, that if they need that interaction at the out of their, out of their job because they don't get it elsewhere, that they can go get it.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I love being around other people. I mean, I was forced home right in the pandemic. I'm definitely one of the people they talked about where I'm in a remotable job that was forced home in the pandemic. And I think I have like a little bit of umbrage of like, if you think I had the ability to go back to work in 2022, you are kidding yourself. But when I quit my job, I was like, you are going to be home. And I was working in a tiny little closet.

• 27:54Robin Rauzi?

  Like literally.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Like literally in a closet, but I knew that like, I could like fill my cup by going to like an event in DC. And even when we moved to Houston, I was like, okay, you're one step away from the people you would probably talk to or like go down to with happy hour, but like I've made up for it by like traveling. I don't know. There's a balance and there's a way to help people figure out their life that doesn't mean that right now I have to be in DC in an office all the time.

• 28:21Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  You know, and there's, well, and to the extent that employers, okay, I was just trying to think of how to say this because like some of my best friends I've made, I have made at work. But at the same time, I have not needed to be at work to maintain those friendships. It feels like there is a really fun happenstance to being in the office that is good. But the, there's ways to get at that. That doesn't require being in person. And then also just like not having your job be the only source of things. Like we've, we've got a big loneliness problem in our country.

• 28:54Robin Rauzi?

  And we had it before the pandemic. I just also want to note that I was looking into some other data about working from home. And so the American time use survey.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  A2s. It's such a good survey.

• 29:09Robin Rauzi?

  It's, this is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  It is indeed.

• 29:13Robin Rauzi?

  And it just came out in September. And so it says that 56 million wage and salary workers, so that's 37% of them could work at home. And 51 million of them sometimes did work at home. Among those who did work at home, 33% did so because the job required it. So in other words, we focus a lot on people being called back to work, but there is probably also an equal amount of people being told, we're not going to pay for office space anymore. You actually have to work from home. And I think that is, is probably more of the threat to the mental health questions that, that these researchers are trying to get at.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:56Robin Rauzi?

  We've had a handful of big employers say they're going to call everybody back or have called everybody back. Like so in 2024, 83% of CEOs and 79% of them in the United States expected a full return to office within three years.

• 30:13Robin Rauzi?

  There was a poll by a company called Resume Builder that said 3 in 10 companies will eliminate remote work by this year. This was reported by CNBC in February. 67% of firms under 500 employees are fully flexible. 71% of Fortune 100 firms remain flexible with three days in the office being the most common requirement.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  I always thought that the return to office mandates are really just a way to get people to bargain for lower wages in order to keep their work-from-home preferences. And so it's like a big, it's almost like a bluff. Like, I feel like it's a bargaining tactic. I know that there are people who wouldn't agree with that. And I think CEOs genuinely like having people interact and be friends, but the RTOs feel could be underhanded. Not necessarily, but could be.

• 30:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, sure. You want to shrink a little bit and not look like you're laying people off to Wall Street?

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to a group of labor economists about this when I was at a conference a few weeks ago. And we were saying that, we weren't talking about this article specifically, but we were talking about remote work and whether or not you stay home. Because, you know, think tanks, in theory, you don't, none of you need to come in. Like, it's, it's a lot of like, working in isolation and then sharing, but it's not clear you need to have an office for anything.

• 31:27Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  And we were saying that there's, people have not figured out how to do this.

• 31:32Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Like, Americans are really clear. And they say this in the paper, too. People want the ability to work from home. People who work from home, they say they have a better work-life balance, that they have lower attrition from the job, so they have more job stability. So there are trade-offs to this decision. I just, this is something that Americans want, and they have to find the balance for it. And like, we don't know how to do it yet. Not like we, you and I, or we labor economists. I mean, like, America does not know how to have a sector of its workforce at home, really, like, at the best version of itself.

• 32:07Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  So like, what is the most creative way to think about how to take this new style of work and make it work for everybody? And that would have been the really interesting, fun conclusion.

• 32:18Robin Rauzi?

  I think that you touched on something, though, that I think is, at least, probably in Houston, and definitely in Los Angeles, a huge part of working from home, it's the commute. The commute is soul-crushing. And I saw this survey, it was a global survey, but one of the reasons why people liked working from home was because how much they hated commuting. And in this global survey, they found that people would gain back two hours a week. I would gain back two hours a day. I mean, it's easy, an hour each way, to get into the office. And so, that is not nothing.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Yes. So you would want to see, you would want to see a study that's like, compares working from home loneliness to mental health with like, the stress of having an hour-long commute where you drive.

• 33:02Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  And like, how do these things compare so that you can say, like, the answers go back to the office? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have not built out the full scenario. There's like, pretty good studies that like, women will turn down better jobs if it messes with their commute too much because their care obligations, like, just pick-up-and-drop-off are so, like, I mean, you think your workplace is strict, nobody is stricter than the pick-up-and-drop-off window of a daycare or a school. Like, you've, you've got to be there. There is no option. So you, if you get a new job, but you have to go a half hour in the, in one direction versus a half hour in another direction, like, you can't take it because you can't mess with your care. Probably less of an issue if you were working from home, but, you know, it's...

• 33:43Robin Rauzi?

  We haven't really even touched on hybrid work, which is probably, really, where most of the work from home is happening.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:50Robin Rauzi?

  But that's also requires a different set of management skills and a different way of managing. And I think workplaces are still figuring that out. And especially because, you know, how do you onboard new people? How do you train new workers? I think this is particularly hard on, on new employees and young employees who need mentoring and, you know, are looking to make friends.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  So I agree with you, but I'm also like, like, they ever like, did that [bleep] much for young people, anyway? I mean, like, you've had this just, like, really, like, long-term decline in entry-level work. People used to do on-the-job training. There used to be probationary periods. Like, you know, cultivating young workers was like, a big part of their model. That's now gone. Like, the idea of, like, on-the-job training is something that most of us have absolutely no idea what it would even look like, because we had to show up at 22, completely prepared to do a job that we didn't know how to do, because that was what was expected of us. And now they're like, you know, you're really hurting young people. I'm like, oh, for [bleep] sake. Like, you can really claim that that's been like, your guiding light for the past three decades is the careers of young people. It feels

• 34:54Speaker 00

  to me like, this conversation about what is best for workers draws out so much hypocrisy and paternalism that I'm like, okay, you know what we're gonna do? Workers get to decide. How about that? How about we empower workers?

• 35:09Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, that is, the question is like, who do you want to decide what your need is for social interaction and how you should get it and where you should get it? And I, as somebody who loved working in newsrooms, loved it. Newsrooms aren't the same anymore. Going to a newsroom would not be anything like it was in, in 1995.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  I'm sure. I don't know. For me, it just comes down to what workers need and want. And I think there's a selection in people who want to be at home. There's a selection in people who want to be in person. And that selection happens in the employers they take, in the jobs they want, in the skills they pursue, of like, the things they want to do. Like, all of that is layered in. And, I don't know, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Like, there's other ways to get workers happy than just to have them in person and, or to have them fully remote.

• 35:55Robin Rauzi?

  Their safety.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Like, their safety, their pay, they're not being exploited, they're not being discriminated, and that they have a voice at work, which, like, you know, unions can help with. So I, I guess, maybe we wanted to record this pillcrow and topic to both open up that this is, I think, not something that we have answers to yet of how to make, what is the best version of remote work in the US? We don't have it yet. I think there's going to be a lot more on management to be better at managing. I think there are a lot of people that are trying really hard to meet their workers where they are to say, like, all right, you want to work from home, we want you all to be friends, like, we're going to figure out a way to do this. But I think amongst a lot of places, it is, take the

• 36:40Speaker 00

  easy way out, you all have to be here, and now I can say that it's better for your mental health. Don't fall for it, optimists. The future is much more nuanced and complicated than we all have to be worker bots for forever, and it's the only time you'll hear me say it. You're not just a worker bot. Your value isn't just a worker bot. People from home might be a little lonelier, but like, there is another option. And it is to like, press on and like, break through whatever is next. And we will get there. We will get there. Okay, well, here, take a break. That's the pillcrow. Dramatic pause.

• 37:17Robin Rauzi?

  It's time for executive orders, where we make the world more to our liking with one dictum at a time. My executive order this week is that news organizations need to let me to be able to dial in the level of newsiness, of news alert that I want. This could be pretty simple. I think every news alert, you know, an editor can easily grade that on a scale of 1 to 10. And like, if I only want 9s and 10s, I think that's fair. I think nothing that happens in a sports ballgame is above a 5, ever. And...

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Maybe like a 3.

• 37:59Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm like, kind of, maybe, I don't know, the Super Bowl or the World Series could be a 4. I don't need sports updates. If somebody, like, old actor dies, don't need a news alert on my phone. Resident of the White House dies? Yes, that's a 10. That's a 10.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  I think I recall seeing an interview with Jennifer Lawrence where she said she got a CNN alert that she had cut her hair.

• 38:23Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Okay, well, I was toying with a few executive orders, but I realized that the one that I had in my head is gonna sound terrible, so I'm gonna come up with another one in like, just a few seconds. I can't say spiritual sponsor. Having just recently gone to the zoo, my spiritual sponsor are people who work in animal conservation, in animal conservation efforts. I don't like zoos. Even as a parent of young children, I'm never like, hey, let's just go to the zoo. Like, absolutely not. It's just not one of those parenting things that I enjoy, and I don't really like zoos or go to them. But I did recently get cajoled by children into going to a zoo. And I was more in awe of the animals than they were. They were like, oh, look. And then they walked up. I was like, no, look. Look at that, like, look at him. Like, I kind of, I had that kind

• 39:11Speaker 00

  of moment.

• 39:12Robin Rauzi?

  My spiritual sponsor is the musician Andrew Bird. I just saw him last week with the LA Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and it was great. I've been a fan of his since 1998. And seeing, first of all, seeing somebody you love live in a venue like that is just terrific. But also, he's just an incredible, incredible musician who plays many, many instruments, has a great voice. He actually whistled the melody line of an entire piece by Ravel with the LA Philharmonic. That was amazing. But also, he's a great

• 39:52Robin Rauzi?

  writer. He's, he's, he's really a fantastic songwriter. So, yeah, living on Andrew Bird this week.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, my executive order is related. There needs to be more brass sections in popular songs. It was like a theme in older music. There's always like brass. We had horns. We need more horns in songs. Like, they need to come back. I mean, I love the synth. I love the acoustic guitar, but I need like, I need more like, full brass.

• 40:17Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  At the back of a song. I need more brass.

• 40:20Robin Rauzi?

  I have whole playlists that are brass funk, instrumental with brass. Yeah, love it.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  That's my executive order. Just more brass. Brass all the time. More brass. Bring it back. Whistling, brassin'.

• 40:33Robin Rauzi?

  More car colors, more, more instruments.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  I actually think maybe I'm 85 years old.

• 40:40Robin Rauzi?

  You do watch Jeopardy! every night.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  I do watch Jeopardy! every night. Jeopardy! is my favorite show. The Optimist Economy podcast is edited by Sophie Alon. Our video production for social media is by Andy Robinson. Thank you, Andy and Sophie.

• 41:00Robin Rauzi?

  Thank you, guys.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Video clips from the show for you to share are available on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. T-shirts, hats, tote bags are on our website, optimist economy dot com.

• 41:10Robin Rauzi?

  If you're on Substack, free or paid subscribers to Optimist Economy can join our chat room. And if you have the means to contribute to keep the show on the air, we are entirely listener-supported. So if you'd like to give a gift at whatever level is comfortable, we'll gladly receive that at optimist economy dot com.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Dun-dun. My, it's my sister's text message chime is the Law and Order. Dun-dun. Yeah. Well, while mine is actually the chirp, the hailing chirp from Star Trek, because I am pretty cool.