Office workers across America have adjusted to working remotely over the past two months. According to a recent study by IBM, many would prefer it to stay that way. In a survey of a mind-boggling 25,000 U.S. adults, 54% would prefer to continue working remotely after the pandemic ends. Additionally, 75% would like to work from home at least some of the time, and 40% would have strong feelings about an employer not giving the option for remote work.

I find this research fascinating for several reasons. First of all, 25,000 respondents is a HUGE sample size. Assuming the population is all 209,128,094 adults in the U.S., the margin of error would be 0.81% at the 99% confidence interval! In layman's terms, it means that if the survey were repeated 100 times, in 99 of the instances, the results would vary by less than 1%. In contrast, a typical gen-pop survey of U.S. adults would likely include between 1,000-2,000 respondents, which would give a respectable 4.07% to 2.88% margin of error. In other words, these numbers are hyper-accurate.

I'm also intrigued by these numbers because it would require a fundamental shift in how we work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 16% of Americans worked remotely last year. While working from home has become much more common in recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated the trend. I'm curious to see how the business landscape evolves once life gets back to normal and if American workers will get their wish to continue working remotely.