Companies now have the upper hand in the employer-worker dynamic

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been an outspoken critic of remote work. And now, it seems, he’s doubling down on that opinion. Bloomberg is reporting that the financial services firm plans to bring workers back to the office five days a week, joining Amazon, Walmart, Dell and other corporations that have rolled back remote work policies.

If you look at what’s changed most since remote work’s peak a few years ago, it’s the labor market. Back in 2021 and 2022, we’d coined phrases like the Great Resignation and quiet quitting. Employees had power.

“Workers were sitting on a big wad of cash. So that gave them a confidence. You know, ‘if I get fired for this, that’s OK,'” said Harry Holzer, former chief economist for the Department of Labor. 

Fast forward to today, and while unemployment is still low at 4.2%, it’s higher than it was a couple years ago. And job openings have come down. 

“So that incredible bargaining power that workers had a couple of years ago is not nearly as strong,” Holzer said.

A recent survey by KPMG showed nearly 80% of CEOs envision employees back at work, in person, in the next three years.

Erica Groshen, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said data from the BLS shows that though more people are still working from home than they did before the pandemic, “the number of hours that people who could work from home, did work from home, that seems to be declining.“

The thing is, employees do not like back to office mandates, said Melissa Jezior, CEO of Eagle Hill Consulting. And she warned that because of how the labor market ebbs and flows, there will be labor shortages someday, in the future.

So companies that keep flexible workplace policies?

“That could keep you as a competitive employer when the power dynamics shifts back to the employee,” she said.

Right now though, the dynamic still favors employers. And employees know it. That’s one reason why the number of people quitting their jobs is much lower than it was in 2022. And if you’re an employer, sometimes you need workers to leave.

“Perhaps you wanted to drive more attrition, perhaps you want to drive more turnover, for whatever reason, you could think about employing a policy like this,” Jezior said.

Leading to employees quitting on their own instead of being forced to leave through layoffs.