It may not be good news for local governments trying to get public- and private-sector workers back into half-empty Northern Virginia office buildings, but a new survey suggests that Arlington has one of the largest post-COVID remote-work environments in the nation.
Storagecafe.com commissioned the study, which looked at where work-at-home remains significant and where it has petered out in the post-COVID environment.
At 27 percent, Arlington is up there with Seattle and Scottsdale, Ariz., tied for sixth nationally in number of remote workers.
Bellevue (Wash.) and Frisco (Texas) led the pack at 30 percent – not surprising, given their high concentration of tech workers – followed by Cary (N.C.), Berkeley (Calif.) and Boulder (Colo.) at 28 percent each.
On the flip side? Odessa (Texas) had the lowest rate of remote workers (3%). Other communities with rates below 5 percent included Toledo (Ohio), Fayetteville (N.C.), Newark (N.J.) and San Bernardino (Calif.).
Information-related jobs, which include tech workers and those in the telecom and media industries, account for the highest share of people working from home – almost 26 percent of all the employees in those sectors.
(Find the full report HERE. The analysis was based on employment-related data from 289 U.S. cities with populations over 50,000. Occupational and income-related data were sourced from the U.S. Census. )
The challenge for local governments is that fewer workers in the office means less need for office space – something Arlington and the rest of Northern Virginia have plenty of.
A 2023 analysis by Arlington Economic Development found that 76 of the county’s 328 office buildings were considered economically at risk owing to shifting work habits and other factors. While representing less than a quarter of the total number of commercial buildings, the 17.3 million square feet of space involved is more than 40 percent of the county’s total office inventory.
Empty office buildings mean lower tax revenues, coupled with the question of whether property owners should (or even can) wait it out and see if the commercial sector rebounds, or throw in the towel and plan to do something else with either the buildings or the lots they sit on.
Arlington leaders already are planning to potentially amend zoning laws that would make it less cumbersome for owners of commercial buildings to redevelop them into something else. That includes, potentially, conversion to residential units, something Arlington leaders just a few years ago were deriding as impractical.
Action on any zoning changes wouldn’t come before September at the earliest.
The change in office dynamics also has caused major problems for public-transportation systems, which in some cases have yet to see ridership return to anything close to pre-pandemic levels.
