It must be getting bad if the media is saying it out loud. This has been an inevitability since the moment everyone figured out, through firsthand experience, that 90% of the work that gets done in one of these offices can be done from anywhere, but the big commercial real estate groups have been fighting a PR war to get people back to the office.

And it's no surprise they've been trying. Remote work is pretty much a pure efficiency gain. Workers get more flexibility, more options, and spend less time commuting. Firms also have more flexibility, more options, and lower overhead costs. This is a situation where even the cruelest and/or stupidest employers can't argue with the math. You might want your employees to all be in a big dumb terrarium where you can watch them work, but it's going to cost you money and opportunities, and pretty quickly someone who only looks at spreadsheets is going to tell you that they aren't going to sign off on the new office lease because remote work is going to save a dollar.