Remote or not, workers are drifting back toward the city
- Reference: 1774374972
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/24/workers_closer_to_city/
- Source link:
Analyzing more than one million worker contracts across 37,000 companies worldwide, HR and recruitment platform Deel found that people were moving closer to their main offices, even if they still work from home.
The study found the average distance between employees and major cities rose in 2022 but has declined each year since. The trend is particularly pronounced in the US, where workers are now located as close to major cities as they were in 2021. Similar patterns appear in the UK and France.
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"The reversal suggests that even fully remote workers value proximity to urban centers. Return-to-office mandates may play a role – workers who expect occasional in-person requirements are less likely to relocate far from cities. Cultural and lifestyle factors likely matter too: after a few years of remote living, some workers appear to be choosing urban or suburban proximity over rural isolation," [2]the report states .
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Lauren Thomas, economist at Deel, said international hiring isn't driven by shrinking budgets but by intense competition for the best talent. "That talent still lives in major metro areas, closer to big cities than they have in recent years, and they're a hot commodity for companies around the world. Post-pandemic, there is a slow crawl towards the urban centers that were always where top talent gravitated towards."
[5]UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame
[6]WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff
[7]Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning
[8]Half of Dell US staff reportedly opted for remote work
Among nearly 100 startups, the study found that cross-border hiring overwhelmingly targets high-income countries, which runs counter to the idea that international hiring is primarily about cost-cutting. Software developers make up 28 percent of cross-border hires among top startups, followed by tech sales (6.2 percent), business developers (4 percent), and AI engineers (2 percent).
Elsewhere in the report, "AI trainers" have emerged as a distinct profession, with the role growing by 283 percent in cross-border hiring in 2025.
The push-pull between remote and office work became a live-wire topic following the pandemic. For example, in 2023 [9]Dropbox closed one-quarter of its office space at corporate HQ in San Francisco. The company operates Dropbox Studios that allow for occasional in-person work. Some staff see it as a perk of the job, and a boost to work-life balance.
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However, Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri pushed to get staff back into the office, saying that spending five days a week working from home was perhaps "too much family time." The company later [11]spent $172.5 million on a new building on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay as other companies treated flexible and remote work as a permanent shift resulting from the pandemic. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2acMXlkvSRKat8LabDZjhQwAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.deel.com/global-hiring-report-2026/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44acMXlkvSRKat8LabDZjhQwAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/27/uk_copper_struck_off_after/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/30/forget_the_idea_of_wfh/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/15/googles_exceo_steps_back_from/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/20/half_of_dell_us_staff_wfh/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/23/dropbox_shrinks_hq/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44acMXlkvSRKat8LabDZjhQwAAAI0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/24/workday_building_purchases/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Driving doesn't scale
People like to walk to the shop.
Re: Driving doesn't scale
More like shops are poorly stocked outside of the larger cities. Even in London - poorer towns have lower tier products and limited variety. You still have to drive to more affluent areas if you want to buy proper bread, good shoes or decent coffee.
Re: Driving doesn't scale
"You still have to drive to more affluent areas if you want to buy proper bread, good shoes or decent coffee."
Bread I do myself, and the local shop stocks the basics pretty well. If I'm out of brown sauce, it would be a long drive to find a shop in the US that has it so, mail order. Shoes are something I don't buy on a weekly basis so they'll be on for a bigger shopping trip. The discount grocery I like is 45miles away so I make sure I've made my list and checked it twice when I'm going in that direction. It's one of the reasons I bought a chest freezer as the freezer is less money to run than making loads of trips in the car for only a few things.
For somebody with a shopping problem, being in a village might cause stress, but it wouldn't bother me at all. That might be due to me being a "planner". I try really hard to not need things at the last minute that forces me to take a longish trip. I do rely on local shops for the odd thing I know they carry rather than keeping it in the pantry to any great extent. Lots of hardware bits and bobs in the garage that are getting better organized by the week.
Even in a city, finding something such as electronic parts is getting to be tough so I'm ordering more of that online since I have no option. Food, clothes and the most mainstream things are not an issue just about anywhere with a human settlement. Where people are, merchants will rush in.
Because
They stupidly listened to Alan Sugar, the person that wanted everyone back purely because of his vast office portfolio. If they aren't back in the office, they'll stop paying rent so he was clearly panicking.
" with return-to-office mandates playing a role, according to a new report on global hiring trends"
Re: Because
Don't forget the real RTO stakeholders:
Every Pret and Itsu shifting £9 sad bowls to captive commuters who'd eat better for £2 at home.
The manager's wife: "Boo boo, you're a manager, right? Why are you home all day? Are you sure you're telling me the truth? Where are your people?"
The manager himself: "Oh god I miss Eve's perfume when she walks past my desk. Maybe I should organise another Team Get Together. Oh but we had one just two weeks ago..."
RTO isn't about productivity. It's a coalition of commercial landlords, mediocre middle managers who can't justify their existence without visible headcount, and an entire parasitic service economy built around extracting money from people during a commute they never needed to make.
And "gravitating back to cities" - who commissions these reports? Every one of them comes from an HR platform, a commercial landlord lobby, a serviced office provider, or a recruitment firm. They all win when RTO is the narrative - landlords fill floors, office providers sell hybrid desks, HR platforms sell compliance tooling, and recruiters cash in on the churn when people quit over mandates and need replacing. They survey their own customer base, discover a trend that validates their business model, then feed it to journalists as neutral data.
Hysteresis
One extreme to another until a medium is found.