The hybrid work revolution after Covid-19 is already transforming economies

While a more permanent transformation of working life will have painful consequences for many inner-city businesses, economists see a recalibration underway that can revitalize smaller towns, suburbs

Even in the 19th century, workers were beginning to resent the grind of office life.

“You don’t know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief, day after day,” British essayist Charles Lamb wrote in a letter to poet William Wordsworth back in 1822, railing against his toil in the East India Company’s office in Leadenhall Street, London.

For the last 17 months, however, Lamb’s modern successors have mostly worked from home, liberated from what he termed “official confinement.” Today’s white-collar staff are living through a radical transformation of professional life, one economists say