GoKawiilRemote work raises fertility among employed, partnered adults. Davis et al. (2026) estimate WFH accounts for ~291,000 U.S. births per year.
Return-to-office is functionally anti-natalist policy beloved by “pronatalists”. A drop from 42% to 30% WFH among women implies ~100,000 fewer births per year.
WFH delivers more fertility impact than the entire U.S. early childhood spending apparatus, at zero taxpayer cost.
The loudest “pronatalists” (Musk, Andreessen) spent two years killing workplace flexibility while funding nearly a billion in elite fertility tech.
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis forced Asian governments to mandate remote work for fuel savings, accidentally reviving the arrangement corporate America just buried.
One or two hybrid days per week capture nearly all the fertility upside. Companies are going after hybrid like they did with full WFH regardless
By early 2026, the return-to-office movement had won. Not gracefully (Amazon could not even find enough desks for the 350,000 corporate employees it ordered back five days a week) but decisively. JPMorgan Chase ended remote work in April 2025. Dell, AT&T, TikTok, Truist, and the Washington Post followed with five-day mandates. Instagram’s Adam Mosseri told staff a five-day office presence was needed for a “winning culture.” Microsoft began requiring Puget Sound employees three days minimum in February 2026. A KPMG survey found 83 percent of CEOs expected full return to office within three years; a ResumeBuilder survey reported nearly half of all companies demanded four or more in-office days by 2026, with 28 percent phasing out remote work entirely. Some companies used the mandates as quiet layoffs, hoping workers who valued flexibility would self-select out rather than commute.
And the workers complied. By December 2025, only 40 percent of employees said they would quit over a mandatory return-to-office notice, down from 91 percent who said the same in January. The job market had tightened: 2025 produced just 584,000 total job gains, the weakest outside a recession since 2003. The leverage belonged to employers, and employers wanted bodies in chairs.
The pandemic experiment was over. Remote work was being consigned to a brief, strange interlude, a concession to extraordinary circumstances that would not recur. The implicit premise of every return-to-office memo was clear enough: the exogenous global shock that created mass remote work was a one-time event. COVID-19 was the exception. Normalcy was the rule.
After all, what were the odds of another global shock that would force millions of workers home overnight?
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