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You have to chuckle at the headlines sometimes. “Zoom orders workers back to the office,” was one of the more straightforward assessments following the video-conferencing tech giant’s announced change in work plans.
At the start of the pandemic, lots of white-collar professions pivoted to work-from-home setups. Many learned about Zoom as the user friendly, simple solution to have face-to-electronic-face meetings.
It was heralded as the “work from home revolution.” Highly-educated and -skilled professionals’ newfound work habits would turn the traditional office environment into a dinosaur, a relic akin to the high-pile green carpet and wood paneling of the 1970s.
The revolution may be dead.
Zoom is not the only large entity calling folks back in person, at least part time. Other leaders in Silicon Valley feel the same and even President Joe Biden ordered the federal workforce back to their offices a few months ago.
Like most things, hyperbole can run amok. The massive paradigm shift in worldwide work habits was always a bit overstated, and its demise is exaggerated as well. Remote work is not going to simply disappear.
But many companies are regressing to a middle ground. The idea of hybrid work – part in-person office time, part solo contributions from wherever – is likely here to stay in some fields. Fully remote jobs seem to be waning.
This will likely have impacts here in Maine. As recent reporting showed this week, we were one of the top states during the pandemic for inbound migrants. Not asylum seekers, but rather folks from urban areas – probably with jobs that went fully remote – who fled cities for our safety and tranquility. As they brought higher incomes, existing home prices were bid up.
Will some of that tide retreat if the new residents need to be back in Boston or New York offices a couple days a week?
The economic story should lead to political action. Maine’s massive increase in government spending was enabled by huge leaps in individual income tax collection. It isn’t a stretch to believe the treasury was bolstered by high earners moving to our state from elsewhere.
Between state fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2023, individual income tax collections increased by 43%. The median household income between calendar years 2019 and 2021 increased 7%. I’m doubting the data will show a jump of more than 30% when 2022 numbers arrive.
With a relatively meager shift in the median income coupled with huge growth in tax collection, it is a logical conclusion that we added a bunch of high-income taxpayers to the state.
If many of our new high earners need to leave the Pine Tree State to keep their high-paying jobs, their income tax payments leave with them. And that will be a recipe for budgetary disaster in Augusta.
This is where leadership comes in.
We cannot magically make New York commutable from Rangeley or even Springvale. The thing that led many people to choose Maine – its relative distance from big cities – when the pandemic began will be a millstone if those folks need to return to cubicles and offices in downtown towers.
The solution is making Maine a place where these big companies can establish in-person office outposts, with a critical mass of talent that can commute to the office some days and take in the vast amount of information that arises from non-verbal communication.
Regulatory simplicity, a favorable tax environment, and a competitive cost structure – most notably, telecommunications and electricity – are the ingredients that help make it possible. Then, we need to beat the street to help get these companies here so their now-local talent can stay put.
Because “Zoom orders workers back to the office” is worth a chuckle. “Maine budget crisis following out-migration of formerly remote workers” would be a tragedy.
