Enterprise Tech Managers Didn’t Get The Memo About Return To Office Mandates By Joe McKendrick ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Joe McKendrick covers how technology moves markets and careers Follow Author Jun 26, 2026, 08:28pm EDT Jun 26, 2026, 08:30pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Work from home still prevails getty One of the misconceptions about work from home or hybrid is that the entire workforce can avail itself with such arrangements. But, there’s a large segment of workers who cannot – service, maintenance, healthcare, emergency services, delivery, and so forth.
This division of labor was readily apparent during the Covid years, as information workers were able to set up camp in the comfort of their homes while frontline wokers needed to be out in the world, making things work. This was perhaps the greatest bifurcation of the labor force seen since the days of land barons.
Work from home or hybrid is still in play for the information class, and new data out of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest edition of its American Time Use Survey , makes it abundantly clear that work from home or hybrid is still not the rule for most workers..
About 169,000 of the people surveyed were in occupations that could be considered amenable to work from home or hybrid work – managerial, professional, sales, and administrative roles. About 39,000 were in the more frontline worker roles, including service workers. This ratio doesn’t reflect the economy at large, and skews toward the information worker side. Reality check: The U.S. has about 100 million frontline workers , according to a report out of Boston Consulting Group, with these workers representing more than half of the entire workforce.
Overall, some 35% of workers in the BLS survey did some or all work at home – again, heavily skewed toward the information sector. On top of that, being an executive or manager has its privileges, with one of those being to work from home when they want. A majority of business managers and executives, 57%, were able to take advantage of work from home. It would be interesting to see data on how many of these work-from-home managers are in companies with return-to-office mandates.
Close to half of professionals also worked from home. Interestingly, close to one-third of wage and salary workers also worked from home at least some of the time.
The frontline component of the workforce – production, service, and healthcare workers are not part of the work from home/hybrid equation – barely a handful are in a position to avail themselves to such arrangements, even on a partial basis. Not surprisingly, those in construction, maintenance, and agriculture could not work from their homes.
Some demographic slices from the BLS data: Employed women (38%) were more likely to work at home than employed men (31%). Workers with higher levels of education were more likely to work at home than were those who had less education. Fifty-one percent of employed people with a bachelor’s degree or higher performed some work at home, compared with 19% of those with a high school diploma and no college.
The BLS data reflects what employees themselves are reporting – what’s the perspective on work from home and hybrid from the employer side? While the BLS data shows about one-third pf employees report taking advantage of such flexible…