More than one-third of employees still work from home, new research shows

Remote work remains elevated: 35% of employed people did some/all work remotely in 2025 vs 33% in 2024, per the American Time Use Survey. Despite employers tightening return-to-office enforcement, a Randstad Workmonitor found 81% of employers report collaboration is harder in remote/hybrid setups while only 48% of employees say office work boosts productivity. The article implies persistent headwinds for strict RTO mandates, with hybrid work likely to remain the default.

Analysis

The market is still underestimating how sticky hybrid work has become. This is no longer a cyclical concession to labor tightness; it is a compensation-and-retention lever, which means employers that try to remove flexibility often have to pay for it elsewhere through higher wages, sign-on bonuses, or looser performance standards. That shifts bargaining power toward firms that can sell flexibility, not just firms that can enforce attendance.

Second-order winners are the infrastructure names that monetize distributed teams rather than office density: staffing, HR tech, collaboration software, and cybersecurity. For staffing firms like RANJY, the more important effect is not headline headcount growth but mix shift toward temp/project work and faster churn, which supports volumes even if permanent placements remain sluggish. The losers are office landlords and downtown-adjacent consumer spending baskets; if utilization plateaus below pre-pandemic norms, leasing demand, renewal spreads, and tenant-improvement economics stay structurally weaker than consensus models assume.

The key risk is that the current narrative becomes too binary. In the next 1-3 months, any corporate survey or earnings call that shows higher-than-expected office attendance can trigger a sharp but probably temporary relief rally in office REITs. Over 6-18 months, the bigger catalyst is not mandate rhetoric but whether companies start linking flexibility to productivity and promotion outcomes; if they do, hybrid becomes institutionalized and the office-recovery trade breaks.

Contrarian view: the move may be over-interpreted as negative for every work-from-home beneficiary. The real economic winner is not remote work per se, but firms that reduce labor frictions. That makes the best relative trade a barbell: own the companies enabling flexible labor, short the assets priced for full normalization of downtown occupancy. The article is a reminder that policy announcements are weak signals; realized behavior is what matters.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long RANJY on weakness over the next 1-3 months: hybrid persistence should support staffing demand and keep flex-work pricing power intact; risk/reward improves if management commentary shows stable temp volumes and no deterioration in gross margin.
• Pair trade: long RANJY / short BXP or VNO for a 3-12 month horizon. Thesis: flexible work caps office recovery while staffing demand benefits from higher labor churn and project-based hiring; falsify if office leasing spreads and occupancy re-accelerate materially.
• Set a watchlist alert for office REIT earnings and occupancy metrics rather than trading the headline. If same-store occupancy or renewal spreads surprise higher for two consecutive quarters, cover short office exposure quickly; that would signal the market has been too bearish on RTO reversal.
• Use any post-RTO headline rally in office-sensitive names to fade the move rather than chase it. The immediate reaction is likely faster than the fundamental correction, and the better entry is after management guidance confirms whether attendance translates into productivity and renewals.
• If you want a lower-beta expression, favor collaboration and workflow beneficiaries over office rebound names on a 6-18 month view; the risk/reward is best in businesses tied to distributed-team operating models, not in assets dependent on a full commuting recovery.