Gen Z are less likely to favor fully remote working compared with millennials and boomers

Since the pandemic, working from home has not only endured as a pretty standard practice for office-based companies, but also remains a requisite for some job seekers accustomed to having at least some days where their commute time is measured in seconds rather than minutes or hours.

Now, several years on from a string of Covid-induced lockdowns, the novelty of doing one’s job in a room of one’s own may have finally worn off... especially for the youngest cohort of employees.

New kids on the (office) block

A recent Gallup survey found that fully remote work was least popular with Gen Z among all age groups surveyed, with only 23% saying they preferred working from home full time — considerably less than the 35% of millennial, Gen X, and baby boomer respondents who favored the wholly WFH model.

Gallup outlined one factor that could be driving a desire to return to the office: Gen Z is statistically the loneliest generation. The same survey found that 27% of Gen Z reported feeling lonely the day before — almost 3x the share of boomers.

Even so, while a large faction of Gen Z don’t want to be at home permanently, they definitely don’t want to be in the office all the time either, with only 6% of Gen Z preferring to be totally on-site. Indeed, most seem to want options: while hybrid was the preferred work setup across all generations, it was by far the top pick for younger participants (71%).

Another reason for Gen Z’s office push could be that being in a coworking environment might translate to better engagement. An earlier Gallup poll, cited by Business Insider in January, found that only 30% of workers under 35 years old reported feeling engaged at work last year — dipping below the older cohort for the first time in the survey’s history.