Bank of America is out with the latest results of its eighth annual survey of millennials. The results show just how many millennials with the ability to work-from-home have their sights set on owning a home in the suburbs.
Millennials are “increasingly looking to buy rather than rent.” The cost of rent has surged amid inflation. Older millennials are “almost three times as likely to move into a house than an apartment.”
Millennials are looking to move to the suburbs. Two thirds of millennials “believe that they’ll buy a home in the next two years, citing a return on investment as the number one reason for purchasing.” According to BofA’s survey, more than 40% of millennials “expect to buy a house in the suburbs.”
“We expect the ability to WFH to remain an incentive for young families to seek out more remote suburban and rural markets where housing may be more affordable."
Big cities have seen “historic population losses” since the start of the pandemic. Some cities have since rebounded, but the suburbs are increasingly appealing as remote work and inflation continue.
Millennials are “especially pessimistic about the future.” 61% of millennials believe home prices will increase over the next three years. 71% believe rents will increase over the same period.
Read more via Fortune
According to a new analysis by SmartAsset, the high cost of living (and taxes) in some of America's most expensive cities mean “you need to make much more than $100,000 to get six-figure purchasing power.”
In New York, San Francisco, and Honolulu, you “you need a salary of over $300,000 to bring home $100,000 after taxes and adjustments for the cost of living,” according to SmartAsset.
In Houston, Texas, a worker “only needs to gross about $125,000 to achieve the same purchasing power as someone making $312,000 in New York.”
Read more via Bloomberg, SmartAsset
Workers have not been shy about their desire for freedom and flexibility. But, according to a new report from Ivanti, “employers still appear to be failing to provide the level of freedom employees want.” Ivanti surveyed 8,400 office workers, IT professionals and C-level executives across the globe.
While 71% of office workers say they “want to work a hybrid or remote schedule of their choice,” Ivanti reports that “only 43% of employees can work in the location of their choice.”
That “preference gap” (between what workers say they want, and what employers offer) is 28 points for office workers, more than double the preference gap for executives (12 points) and IT workers (13 points).
Office workers continue to want the choice to work remotely. 66% of office workers said they “have not experienced any negative side effects from hybrid/virtual work,” up 15% from the same survey in 2022. What's more, office workers said they “would be willing to take an 8.9% pay cut to be able to work remotely, an increase from 5% in 2022.”
In 2022, 9% of workers said they believed they had “been passed over for a promotion due to hybrid working.” That dropped to just 2% in 2023.
“When it comes to how and where employees work – leaders who do not embrace and enable flexibility where they can – also risk not reaping the benefits of a more engaged, more productive workforce."
Read more via HCA Mag
Throughout the pandemic, many prominent Wall Street firms have been outspoken about the need for workers to return to the office. Yet a new survey by Scoop of flexible-work plans indicates that “fewer banks are requiring employees to be in the office five days a week.”
Only 20% of financial services companies are requiring workers to be full-time in-office, down from 22% the previous quarter.
The survey also found a decrease in the number of banks allowing “fully flexible remote-work options”, indicating a growing shift to hybrid work models.
“Employees are saying that we will not do fully on-site, and companies are saying that we are missing certain things with fully remote work, like training or collaboration. So two or three days a week seems to be a truce among companies and employees. It’s an uneasy happy medium.”
Read more via Bloomberg
