By Nathalie Voit
Global tech firm IBM said only one-fifth of its workforce is in the office three or more days a week, CEO of IBM Arvind Krishna told a CNBC correspondent at the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 27.
Talking to CNBC’s Sara Eisen on Monday, Krishna said he could not envision a scenario in which 60% of its staff returns to the office for a sustained period of time. The CEO also said he expects inflation to remain well above the average Fed target rate of 2% for at least three or four years.
According to the interview, Krishna doesn’t necessarily believe the country is headed for a recession as many experts are now predicting. However, he does suggest the economy may encounter a significant GDP slowdown.
“The unemployment part has been taken care of,” he said, referring to recent government data suggesting that the labor market remains tight, not a prior feature of past recessions. In this sense, he describes current economic conditions as “atypical.”
The company employs over 280,000 people worldwide.
The expansion of remote work is evident throughout the tech sector and across many other industries, including the automotive industry–once considered one of the last sectors in American life to embrace remote work.
Major American corporations like Ford have made the option to work from home a permanent feature for some of their workforce.
According to a press release from the auto company published on March 2021, 30,000 of the company’s non-site-dependent employees currently have the option to permanently work remotely. Ford implemented its new policy for non-site-dependent workers after a survey conducted in June 2020 found that 95% of its workforce preferred a hybrid work model scenario over 100% in-person work. Just five percent of those surveyed said they wanted to work onsite or at a Ford campus location.
The normalization of remote work comes as employees continue to hold the upper hand in the labor market.
According to Labor Department data published on June 3, nonfarm payrolls rose by 390,000 in May as the unemployment rate held at a steady 3.6%. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected payrolls to increase by 325,000 over the month, well below actual employment statistics.
