There are job tiers, especially if you have two working spouses, where full RTO for one if the other can stay remote could mean it's cheaper just to have one sp

There are job tiers, especially if you have two working spouses, where full RTO for one if the other can stay remote could mean it's cheaper just to have one spouse stop working. Another factor is always housing. My spouse is on a team with a bunch of people that essentially relocated out of commute range during COVID. If you don't need to be within 45min train of SF/NYC, you can save 25-75% on housing, and probably have lower income tax rate too. A lot of these people also bought housing at 3% mortgage rates which would need to be replaced with a 7% mortgage. $200K in say PA outside Philly or CT outside Greenwich tier is absolutely killing it. $200k in Manhattan/Jersey City is permanent renter status, maybe 2 bedroom if lucky. I'd also say that there was a 2 year peak of hopefulness that big tech jobs would become a national phenomenon.. rather than crowding all the good paying jobs into a few zip codes where you need to pay everyone a ton so they can piss all that money on overpriced housing. Yet here we are, the economy has turned and companies having the upper hand want to go back to 2019.