Remote work threatens New York’s future | …

The explosion of remote working caused by covid-19 threatens the future of the world’s major business centers, led by new York, where a significant proportion of workers are expected to never return to offices and where large companies are already choosing to reduce or abandon their spaces.

One year after the start of the pandemic, only 10% of Manhattan office workers have returned to their usual jobs, according to a survey released this month by The Partnership for New York City, an organization that brings together many large, city-based companies.

The companies surveyed predict that by September – when most citizens will be fully immunized – around 45% of staff will be returned to their offices.

Large New York employers then expect that just over half of their workforce will continue to work remotely in the future, at least for part of their day.

For rent

Many large companies are betting on this remote working revolution, or at least accepting it, they are already taking steps to adapt.

This is the case of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, employing more than 20,000 people in its New York offices. Although this has not been officially confirmed, according to The New York Times The entity plans to implement a rotation model in which employees sometimes work in the office and sometimes remotely.

JPMorgan Chase has put on the market a space of approximately 65,000 square meters which it leases in the financial district of lower Manhattan, the largest space offered for subletting in the entire city.

And this is not the only one, because according to The Wall Street Journal other companies like Salesforce O PricewaterhouseCoopers They are also trying to set up offices that they have rented.

Giving up these spaces is not always easy, given that rental contracts are generally for ten years or more, but the trend is already very clearly felt in the office stock – with an 80% increase in available space in subletting in the financial district – and prices, which have fallen to double digits across the country.

At present, there are over 9 million square feet of office space in the Manhattan market, an increase of 37% compared to last year and larger than all of the Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas offices combined, according to The New York Times.

Consequences for all

The office’s decline as the center of New York’s economic activity will not only affect Manhattan’s cityscape, but pose a serious threat to the future of the city as a whole.

City coffers, already hard hit by the pandemic, risk losing up to $ 2,500 million in property tax recovery over the next fiscal year, one of the New York City Council’s major funding channels, which is largely dependent on real commercial. field.

This is underlined by the estimates of the municipal authorities, who want to prevent this from becoming a reality by promoting a return to offices.

To set an example, the mayor Bill de Blasio decreed that all city council employees resume their duties effective May 3, in a measure that will directly affect some 80,000 people who have worked from home since the outbreak of the pandemic.

According to De Blasio, this is a “powerful message” about the reopening of the Big Apple and its “full recovery”. “Businesses see it’s time to come home,” the mayor explained at a press conference, highlighting progress in covid-19 vaccinations as a key issue.

Rethinking the city

However, others see this crisis as an opportunity to rethink the city and end some of the problems that have long plagued it, whether it is the concentration of jobs in areas like Midtown Manhattan, sky-high housing prices, the poor state of transport services or the excessive role of the automobile in town planning.

The pandemic was a “reminder that the city is not Midtown Manhattan, it is the residential districts and that is what counts”, explained this Thursday during a conference organized by the Manhattan Institute, the professor Rohit Aggarwala from Columbia University.

Alain Bertaud, researcher at the Marron Institute at New York University, highlighted the positive effect that a reduction in office space and its conversion into housing can have, helping to reduce prices and bringing a new generation to neighborhoods in the city which now are not affordable for young people.

Transportation may also be among the beneficiaries, according to Aggarwala, who believes that moving to a model in which a majority of employees will not go to the office on a daily basis will help address the problem of road congestion and overflow that looms large. product. watched in the metro during rush hour.

The era of remote work, according to trade journalist Henry Grabar, may even be a boon for New York City and draw many people to the city who have always dreamed of living in the Big Apple. “The fundamental set of services, the quality of life, the car-free life… the things New York has to offer that no other American city offers is unique,” ​​he said.

* From the EFE agency.