- Return-to-office mandates have worried some Americans who want to keep working from home.
- Some have been applying for new jobs or turned down roles at prominent companies with RTO policies.
- Amazon and JPMorgan are among the firms that have called workers back to the office full-time.
Some Americans facing return-to-office mandates are doing whatever they can to keep working from home.
Take Richard, who began working for Amazon as a finance manager last year. He said that the company’s three-days-a-week in-office policy wasn’t ideal because his prior job was fully remote, but he accepted the role because he felt Amazon offered better growth opportunities.
However, when the company announced that in 2025, it would be ramping up its return-to-office policy to five days a week, Richard decided to try to jump ship.
“I immediately started applying for remote jobs,” said Richard, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions. “I wanted to get ahead of the rush of people that would be applying once the policy went into effect.”
Richard is among the Americans reacting to their companies’ return-to-office mandates. In recent months, corporate giants like Amazon, AT&T, and JPMorgan have issued timelines for when employees must return to the office five days a week. In response, some workers have begun searching for remote or hybrid jobs so they can quit and avoid returning to the office full-time.
A Pew Research survey of 2,315 US adults conducted in October found that, among Americans who work from home at least some of the time, 46% said they would be very or somewhat unlikely to stay in their current role if their employer no longer allowed them to work from home. This included 61% of respondents who work from home all the time. However, finding a new remote role isn’t easy: Job seekers have encountered a challenging labor market and intense competition for roles that allow work from home.
Richard, who’s in his 30s, said he hasn’t had much luck in his job hunt so far and that he’s expanded his search to hybrid roles. He hopes that hiring will pick up later this year.
“There are less and less fully remote roles and more people trying to fill them,” he said. “It has been hard to get far in the interview process.”
In a September memo to employees, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that “the advantages of being together in the office are significant.” In a January memo, JPMorgan’s operating committee said that it thought bringing workers back to the office was “the best way to run the company.”
How employees are trying to work around RTO mandates
Some Americans managed to secure work-from-home roles before the market became more challenging.
In 2022, George was working remotely as an IT professional in the financial industry. When his employer began discussing return-to-office plans — some teams were asked to switch from remote to hybrid — he found a new remote role.
George, 39, kept his original job and juggles both roles simultaneously to help ensure he’ll always have at least one remote gig. He’s earning about $250,000 annually — roughly double his prior income.
“I ultimately decided to try it since I could easily just drop one if it was too much,” George, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions, previously told BI.
While some workers might be fine with hybrid working arrangements, there’s no guarantee a company won’t later issue a stricter return-to-office mandate. This is among the reasons Steven, an e-commerce professional based in New Jersey, prioritized a fully remote working arrangement during his job search.
After being laid off two years ago from a job that allowed him to work remotely, Steven applied for a mix of in-person and remote roles. Last February, he landed an offer from JPMorgan that would require him to work from the office three days a week in Manhattan.
As he mulled over the offer, he estimated that his commuting time would total nine hours a week — or roughly 450 hours a year. Parking at his local train stain and taking the New Jersey Transit would cost him roughly $7,200 in annual commuting costs.
Around the same time, Steven received another job offer — this one for a remote position that offered an annual salary that was around $5,000 lower than the JPMorgan role. When he compared the jobs in terms of the money he’d earn for every hour he’d have to “invest” in them — including commuting time — he said it was an easy choice to pick the remote role.
“JPMorgan just could not compete,” he said, adding, “A 40-hour week plus nine commute hours is basically a 50-hour week for the salary that they were offering.”
Steven said he’s particularly grateful he turned down the offer because, on January 10, JPMorgan announced that most employees would be required to work from the office five days a week beginning in March.
Meanwhile, Richard is still looking for a remote role while commuting to his current job. Due to space constraints at his office, he said he doesn’t have to comply with Amazon’s five-day-a-week policy until April. In the meantime, he’s found ways to minimize his in-office time.
Richard said he typically goes into the office three days a week but estimated that he only works from the office between nine and 12 hours a week across the three days. He thinks he can get away with this because he’s the only one from his team who works at that particular office location.
“I would go into the office for a few hours, avoid rush hour, and fulfill my badging requirement,” he said, adding that he plans to take a similar approach once the five-day-a-week policy takes effect.
George said his second employer appears to have permanently embraced remote work, but that he still has some concerns that his original employer will eventually require him to return to the office. He said he lives roughly 14 miles from the nearest office — an hourlong commute with traffic and about 30 minutes without.
Steven said his employer has called some workers back to the office, but that he’s been told this won’t impact him because he was designated as a remote worker when he was hired. He thinks his company offers workers in certain roles this perk to attract and retain talent.
“If you want to be able to find the right kind of people, you’re going to be much more successful at finding people if you allow remote work,” he said.
Has your employer asked you to work from the office more? Reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.
