Are people finally returning to the office?

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.

Why we asked about returning the office: Headlines about companies mandating time in the office/more time in the office started upticking at the end of the year. Would 2024 mandate a return for those who were still remote/remote-ish?

What we found: One question we have asked in most every wave of the Consumer Tracker over the last two years is “where are you working?” And the results have been pretty consistent. Half (50-55%) are in the workplace only. The other half are more or less evenly split between home-only and hybrid, with home-only having a few points edge most waves. Until this wave, which sees 7 points fewer at-home-only, and that share (7 points) going entirely to hybrid. We’re not ready to declare this as a huge shift to hybrid from remote, but we’ll definitely keep an eye on it and see if it’s a blip in the data or a real trend.

Lending a little credence to this being a real thing, we ask what people consider “the right mix” and there is a similar shift away from people saying all- or mostly-at-home toward people thinking hybrid is the ideal. AND there’s a similarly-sized shift in people saying that over the past few months, their opinion has changed and they “want to be at the office more often than they thought before.” So maybe there’s something there. We’ll keep an eye on this.

More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:

The post-holiday COVID surge barely bothered America

Americans barely paid attention to news events over the holidays – but they care about what happened