2020 will establish a lasting new normal, as World War Two did for women in the workforce.

In context the claim is that 2020 would be a turning point, like WWII for women's work: changes made during the pandemic (chiefly remote and digital work) would last after the crisis rather than revert. Judge whether changes adopted in 2020 were still largely in place through 2023. TRUE: reliable data (e.g. BLS, Census Household Pulse, WFH Research/SWAA, Eurostat) show that remote or hybrid work and similar pandemic-era practices stayed well above pre-2020 levels through 2023, a lasting new baseline, even if below the 2020 peak. MOSTLY TRUE: a lasting new baseline is clear but noticeably smaller or narrower than the WWII comparison implies, for example confined mainly to remote-capable white-collar sectors. MIXED: some 2020 changes persisted while others largely reverted, so evidence is roughly balanced. MOSTLY FALSE: most practices went back close to pre-2020 levels and only small remnants persisted. FALSE: the data show a near-complete return to pre-2020 patterns by 2023, with no lasting shift.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 35 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2023 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Economics Daily · 15 July 2024

   “The share of employed people who spent time working at home on days they worked was about the same as in 2022 (34 percent) but higher than in 2019 (24 percent), before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

2. E2 The Evolution of Work from Home Journal of Economic Perspectives (American Economic Association) · 4 November 2023

   “Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20–64 years old, as of mid-2023. That's about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s.”

3. E3 Mapping the Midweek Mountain: The New Geography of Hybrid Work arXiv · 24 January 2024

   “Office-based workdays declined from 42% in 2019 to 20.7% in 2022, before settling at 29.1% in 2023, a new equilibrium significantly below pre-pandemic levels.”

4. E4 Highlights of data on telework (August 2023) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 20 December 2023

   “Seventy-nine percent of people who worked in August 2023 did not telework in either period.”

BLS data show that 35 percent of employed people did some work at home on days they worked in 2023, about the same as in 2022 and up from 24 percent in 2019 (E1). An article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives put full work-from-home days at 28 percent of paid workdays in mid-2023, about four times the 2019 rate (E2). A study found that office-based workdays settled at 29.1 percent in 2023, against 42 percent in 2019, and called this a new equilibrium (E3). So a lasting new baseline is clear, but it is narrower than the WWII comparison suggests: BLS reports that 79 percent of people who worked in August 2023 did not telework in either of the periods it measured (E4).