How Badly Do You Want Me In-Office?: Putting a Dollar Value on Alternative Work Arrangements for Recent College Graduates

Abstract

For younger and more junior members of the workforce, mentorship and “face time” are important aspects of the job. As we move past the pandemic, to what extent do new college graduates value in-person work? I quantify the willingness to pay for remote, hybrid and in-person work environments using a novel survey amongst employed college graduates aged 22-30 in the United States. I test for heterogeneity by college graduation year, comparing cohorts graduating before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. I find that young graduates consistently valued the flexibility and freedom that came with alternative work arrangements over more traditional, collaborative in-person work environments. 67% of respondents preferred fully remote work environments over hybrid work environments and preferred in-person work environments overwhelmingly less; they were willing to give up an average of 14% of wages to work fully remotely as opposed to fully in-person. Even amongst hybrid work environments, not all are made equal, and respondents overwhelmingly preferred the most freeing option, with 88% preferring flexible and personally set in-person workdays over a company-wide standardized in-person workdays schedule. Combined with textual data analysis, this suggests that collaboration, mentorship, or “face time” may not be the priority of young college graduates when choosing jobs over flexibility and freedom. As the world redefines workplace norms, flexible work arrangements are here to stay in our somewhat online, somewhat in-person world as companies and employees continue to find the balance between flexibility and productivity.