There has been a lot of comment since the beginning of lockdown about the likelihood of the move away from office working, to a more flexible approach, becoming permanent.
Some have argued that we will return to where we were before but others including Roger Bootle, in an article we wrote a previous piece about, argues that ‘The office as we know it may not recover from the Coronavirus’.
In a piece in the Daily Telegraph today Alistair Heath argues that this change may be bad news for middle class professionals in the long run.
Key points he makes are:
- The self-satisfied upper middle-class office workers shouldn’t be so confident about their future.
- If workers no longer need to sit together in offices, legal and immigration barriers fall away. Suddenly, every office worker is competing with every other office worker in the world.
- The middle classes are sitting on a timebomb. They had better enjoy their current work-life balance while they can.
Very interesting and, as ever, we will see.
Chris Goodwin