They call it "Mid-Michigan" but it's the top spot for the work-from-home crowd.
The town is Lansing, the capital of the Great Lake State, and the birthplace of the basketball legend Magic Johnson, the actor Burt Reynolds, and the director John Hughes, to name just a few.
This is where Olds Motor Vehicle Co. was founded in 1897, a move that helped transform the town into an industrial powerhouse.
Lansing is home to about 113,000 people and it's also the No. 1 U.S. city in which you can find a job with remote flexibility, according to a report from CNBC.
As many as 39% of job descriptions there explicitly say people can work from home as of February.
Not too far behind is Topeka, Kan., where 32% of current job openings openly state that candidates can work remotely at least one day a week.
Third on the list is San Francisco, where Tony Bennett left his heart, and where 30% of the job descriptions are remote-work friendly.
Reston, Va,, nailed the No. 4 position with 30%, and then, hey, look, we're back in Michigan, only this time we're in Ann Arbor, where 29% of the job openings permit remote work at least one day a week.
Many People Are Settling Into Hybrid Work
Rounding out the top 10 cities were Washington, Salem, Ore., McLean, Va., Chicago and Boston.
The covid-19 pandemic shutdown rattled the workplace experience as people bailed from office buildings and stayed home in droves to do their jobs and embarrass themselves on Zoom videoconferences.
Roughly a third of U.S, workers with jobs that can be done remotely are working from home all the time, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
This is down from 43% in January 2022 and 55% in October 2020, the think tank said, but up from only 7% before the pandemic.
"While the share working from home all the time has fallen off somewhat as the pandemic has gone on, many workers have settled into hybrid work," the study said. Hybrid work means they work from home some days and from the office, workplace or job site other days.
The study said that 61% of U.S. workers overall do not have jobs that can be done from home. Workers with lower incomes and those without four-year college degrees are more likely to fall into this category.
The Pew survey found that 41% of those with jobs that can be done remotely are working a hybrid schedule, up from 35% in January 2022.
“Many hybrid workers would prefer to spend more time working from home than they currently do,” the report said.
“About a third (34%) of those who are currently working from home most of the time say, if they had the choice, they’d like to work from home all the time."
Midweek Golf Games Surge
Among those who are working from home some of the time, half say they’d like to do so all (18%) or most (32%) of the time, the study said.
And check this out: The number of people playing golf midweek has more than doubled since 2019, according to Stanford University Economics Prof. Nicholas Bloom.
People used to go before or after work, or on the weekends, but now the midday, midweek golf game is becoming more common, Bloom said, according to Stanford Report.
The same is probably true for things like gyms, tennis courts, retail hairdressers, ski resorts, and anything else that consumers used to pack into the weekends, he added.
In addition, public-transit journeys have plummeted and are currently down by a third from prepandemic levels.
Bloom said startup rates are surging, up by 20% from prepandemic numbers, since working from home provides a cheaper way to start a new company by saving a lot on initial capital and rent.
Also, people can more easily work on a startup on the side when their regular job offers the option to work from home.
“In some ways, one of the biggest lasting legacies of the pandemic will be the shift to work from home,” said Bloom.
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