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.

http://digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/298/reader/reader.html?social#!preferred/0/package/298/pub/298/page/68/article/64478

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