The slow return to the office of summer and early fall appears to be over, for now.

Office occupancy in the 10 big metropolitan areas has been declining since late October and hit 24.78% last week https://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

Last week’s jobs report contained similar news.

The share of employed Americans working at home because of the pandemic rose from 21.2% in October to 21.8% in November, the first monthly increase http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

To some extent this is as it should be.

Amid a deadly pandemic remote work has slowed the spread of disease while enabling economic activity to continue in ways that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

With the end of the pandemic now (probably) in sight, it’s surely not the worst thing to put off the return to the office for a couple more months.

But only about one-third of U.S. workers before 2020 held jobs that could feasibly be performed remotely http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

For the two-thirds of mostly blue-collar workers who couldn’t work at home, the pandemic has meant:

Higher job losses
Higher risk of disease
Higher risk of death
http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

The occupational categories with the highest work-at-home percentages in November were, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly white-collar and professional http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

The ability to work from home is also very much determined by educational attainment.

It is of course not news that people’s ability to navigate safely through this pandemic has varied greatly by socioeconomic class, but this chart is a stark illustration http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

There’s also some regional differences in working at home this year.

For both New York and San Francisco, their business districts remain mostly deserted. Working from home can save lives, but it can also kill downtowns http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb 

The Great Work-at-Home Experiment of 2020 seems to be partly why the economy has weathered the pandemic better than expected.

But it has left a lot of people, businesses and places behind. For a few more months, at least, they’re going to need help http://trib.al/EDQY4Wb