Where We Will Work
If the “office” is dying (it is), what will replace it? And what will we do with all that empty space?
Just a week ago, I wrote a piece for Index called The Future of Work to illustrate that full-time employment as we know it is on the way out, and that self-directed, networked, values-driven entrepreneurialism is quickly replacing it. In it, I shared that 94% of all new U.S. jobs over the past 13 years have been either part-time or self-employed; that for the first time in history, the reason has not been a lack of available jobs, but rather, a choice; that independent workers and freelancers are growing at three times the rate of the rest of the labor force; and that 1 in 5 employees have quit their job, or intend to within the next half-year, citing the driving desire to find “a better fit”—aka alignment of purpose.
These statistics are as astonishing as they are welcome—at least to my ears. Finally, people are waking up to the fact that what we do with the majority of our waking hours should be in service of more than a paycheck.
As a result, we are seeing a seismic shift in work attitudes. The pandemic, which chased most of the labor force home, save those whose job demands a physical presence (a record share of whom have quit those jobs for the very same reasons), has poured accelerant…
