A former Marine print-photojournalist, former State Department Public Diplomacy Officer, former U.S. Air Force Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist, former USACE Public Web Lead & former Denny's waitress
I used to commute to work by bike, metro, MARC, slugging, driving, Uber. Now I’m dreaming of a day when I can slough off commuting forever.
I fought the city of College Park vehemently to get a double wide driveway, which they refused, due to a 20 year old law that said no cars parked in front of homes. Drive ways are only allowed beside homes. The number of cars per person has nearly reached 1 to 1 in some areas of the United States.
My neighborhood is packed so tightly with cars parked in the street that there remains only one lane down the middle. All streets in the Hollywood neighborhood of College Park are effectively one-way both ways.
In our case, we have a tiny little subcompact car I used to get to and from the office daily and a compact SUV we use for shopping or getting our daughter to Patapsco Park or Wheaton Regional Parks, two of our favorite haunts.
Thanks to COVID, I’m wondering if the constant growth of cars per capita might actually reverse itself. In addition to buying more and more cars, we are building more and and more lanes and there’s an extensive metro expansion planned to help move all these bodies into office buildings around the national capital region, but why?
Nearly 40% of the people who are going to work everyday can work from home. That number is almost certainly higher in the DC area. So why not save on the emissions? Why not stop expanding the highways? Why not stop buying so many cars? And running out of places to park them?
If I could be absolutely certain that I would never have to go to my office again, I would likely sell my car. We wouldn’t need to fight with the city about a double wide driveway. We could save on car insurance. And gas. A lot of gas.
Would 37% of American households sell one car? maybe not because many of those households probably have 2 people who can telework, so maybe only 20% of American households would sell their cars.
What would the morning commute look like for those who still have to drive if 20% of the cars disappeared? What would our air quality look like? I’ve been watching my daily report of Good, Good and Good this year. Clean, clear air is NICE!
And what would College Park look like if 20% of the cars didn’t have to be parked in the streets because they no longer existed?
At the beginning of this year, we were talking about which SUV we would buy when replaced the subcompact car. Just 8 months later, I’m thinking of getting rid of it for good. COVID dreaming
Things that are changing: Rural to Urban Migration
Up to 40% could telework fulltime
More neighborly
More Walking, Fitness, Less Car, Gas & Pollution?
Death of the Office Building
Death of the Dry Cleaners and Business Suits
Increased Productivity, More Energy Focused on Work/Family, Less Driving
Possible Rise in Domestic Violence
Increased Learning Curve for Middle Class Kids
More Home Office, Home Improvement, IOT and More Screen Time
More eCommerce
We had a great opportunity to chat with Dror Shaked of Wix this week and asked him what the future of digital publishing holds. He said his latest public presentation was titled the pajama era. I started thinking what does that really mean across the social spectrum?
Historically, rural poor move to concentrated areas of population to find better employment. This includes the American farmer and the Chinese factory girls. Even in Egypt, where some 90+ percent of the population lives in that nation’s capital.
One of the many socio-economic elements that the rural to urban migration has had around the world is a shockingly high real estate cost in areas of concentration like Tokyo, Shanghai, London, San Francisco, Vancouver and DC. Obviously, the lure of cheap and spacious housing is attractive, but historically, rural areas with low cost housing had no industrial base, and thus, no substantive income opportunities.
As much as 40% of the workforce could telework fulltime
COVID-19 may yet do what years of advocacy have failed to: Make telework a benefit available to more than a relative handful of U.S. workers. Only 7% of civilian workers in the United States, or roughly 9.8 million of the nation’s approximately 140 million civilian workers, have access to a “flexible workplace” benefit, or telework, according to the 2019 National Compensation Survey (NCS) from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. And those workers who have access to it are largely managers, other white-collar professionals and the highly paid. (“Civilian workers” refers to private industry workers and state and local government workers combined.) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/20/before-the-coronavirus-telework-was-an-optional-benefit-mostly-for-the-affluent-few/
However, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, “The authors find that 37 percent of U.S. jobs can be performed entirely at home—a number that greatly exceeds any recent estimate of how many workers telecommute on an average day. According to the 2018 American Time Use Survey, ‘less than a quarter of all full-time workers work from home on an average day, and even those workers typically spend well less than half of their working hours at home.'” https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/beyond-bls/the-number-of-people-who-can-telework-is-higher-than-was-estimated.htm
We May See More of Our Neighbors
I’m scratching my brain trying to remember which book I read in grad school talked about the elimination of the neighborhood as a result of women joining the work force. It might have been one of those Bowling Alone dystopian view books. I read Turkle’s Alone Together and wasn’t impressed. I was more impressed by Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody, Cognitive Surplus and Don Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital because they focused on how technology was remaking our social connections based on passions and shared interests. This seemed more compelling to me than just hanging out with whoever happened to be born in a geographically co-located residence.
But the dystopian authors bemoaned the time lost in face to face interactions. This summer and fall, I’ve seen a LOT of my neighbors. We are all walking circles around the same blocks and hanging out with kids and dogs at the same neighborhood parks. I’m learning names of neighbors and kids and dogs. This is the kind of community that was apparently lost when women joined the work force because the book whose name I can’t recall talked about how housewives used to spend time together watching kids, sharing recipes, pantry items, etc.
So work from home, some 40-ish percent who may also be moving to rural areas for cheaper, more spacious housing could change the national landscape, including house prices and social fabric, allowing for more awareness of neighbor’s names and lives.
More Walking, Fitness, Less Car, Gas & Pollution?
For me and from what I hear, many of my coworkers, often walk around the neighborhood while on teleconference discussions. I do it mainly so I can resist the temptation to read that email that just popped up. I find I remain more deeply engaged in telephonic conversations or Google Meets if I’m not sitting at a computer. And like many of my peers, I’ve become an obedient slave to my smart watch that complains if I sit too long, warns me that I haven’t yet walked as many steps as I had yesterday at this time and I need 30 minutes of elevated heart rate, so I should get moving. Walking around the neighborhood while teleworking means I see and wave at more neighbors, their kids and dogs.
The PJ Generation almost certainly means a sharp reduction in gas use and car mileage, cleaner air and less pollution. It means less cafeteria food. It might even mean a reduction in our nation’s growing waist lines. My iWatch often complained at me while I was driving home from the Pentagon that I’d been stationary for too long, but I couldn’t very well get up and walk around while stuck in beltway traffic.
Death of the Office Building
And corporations and local, state and federal governments don’t need huge buildings. We don’t need all those wider highways.
Death of the Dry Cleaners and Business Suits
Obviously, less suits, which means the decline of the dry cleaner and Ann Taylor, the only real women’s professional suit maker. Yesterday, Bloomberg featured an article: Work from Home Crushes Dry Cleaners. If you want to know the state of the return to office, take a look at U.S. dry cleaners. 1 in 6 have closed or gone bankrupt as more people work in their sweatpants instead of freshly pressed dress slacks.
Of course, Zuckerberg and Bezos had already changed the nation’s social expectations of the dress code for the smartest guys (and gals) in the room. So, Americans go even more casual that we always were. I think this is great. Since I was a kid in a Catholic Church, I hated the pageantry and wealth displayed in our clothes.
So we down-cost our homes and dress down our clothes. Get out and see our neighbors. What else?
Increased Productivity, More Energy Focused on Work/Family, Less Driving
I think the workplace is going to gain a significant boost in productivity. Some reports have already talked about this. Since people aren’t spending an average of an hour each way in traffic, they have more energy to focus on work and home. There has been some discussion about the lack of work/life balance because work never ends, but I find that something like a split shift works well for our household. I hit the computer as soon as I wake up, sometimes as early at 5:30, when had I been driving to the Pentagon, I would have wasted time, showering, suiting up and driving. I work until my daughter takes a break from her teleschool and we do something together – eat lunch, LEGOs, tennis, read a book. Then back to work until she’s finished with school. Another break until she goes to tae kwon do or pony riding class or when she hits the bath. Then just before bed, I hit the computer again.
The previous work day was 8 hours at the office, 1 hour of lunchbreak that I couldn’t share with my family or neighbors and at least an hour each way driving, sometimes more. Even if work infringes a bit outside of the 8 hours required, I should still get more family time. After all, the total work day used to require 12 hours outside the house.
For kids in healthy families, more time with parents could help increase their learning curves. However, some kids, myself included, saw school as an escape from an uncomfortable home life. We’re already seeing an increase in the income gap as a result of COVID. The PJ Generation might see a greater separation between low and upper middle income which is exasperated by triumvirate of income, mental and physical wellness, and substance abuse. It’s a well know and understood element of life for people struggling with debilitating illnesses like depression and PTSD that “self medication” is often a logical extension of the mental misery. Domestic violence is often related to alcohol or other substance consumption. Additionally, mental and physical illnesses can interfere with a person’s income generating capabilities. As a result the 3 elements interact together in a terrible way to bring people and families down.
One possibility is that people who suffer might be able to find gainful online employment and/or education that they would never have been able to engage in due to their illness. But another possibility is this cohort falls further away from the social fabric.
Increased Learning Curve for Middle Class Kids
For my daughter, she loves having all 3 adults in the house with her – grandma, dad and mom. And it allows us to tag team with her insatiable need for attention that is exhausting for any one person. So, for the middle class, I think kids will benefit from the PJ generation.
More Home Office, Home Improvement, IOT and More Screen Time
We’ll probably see an increase in screen time. “Zoom meetings. Distance learning. Online shopping. The coronavirus pandemic has caused us to spend more hours than ever facing a screen. While that allows us to carry on many of our daily activities safely, it may also bring with it some concerns.” https://www.rivertowns.net/news/education/6749222-Screen-time-increases-with-pandemic-adjustments
More eCommerce
During the first two quarters of 2020, stores like Ulta, Macy’s and Kohl’s experienced dramatic spikes in their ecommerce revenue, rising roughly 200%, 53% and 60% respectively. The International Council of Shopping Centers predicts a 25% rise in ecommerce sales in 2020. https://insights.digitalmediasolutions.com/news/ecommerce-transactions-rising
35-Year Public Affairs & IT Professional 