NEW YORK (AP) — Jason LaCroix felt privileged to work from home, especially as a father to two young children. He needed flexibility when his son, then 6, suffered a brain injury and spent 35 days in intensive care. LaCroix, a senior systems engineer based in Atlanta, took time off and then worked from home while managing his son’s care and appointments.
But LaCroix was laid off last February from that job, where he’d been working remotely for five years. His new role requires him to spend four days a week in a company office and commute for three hours a day. “I want to be around for my kids,” LaCroix, 44, said.
“It’s very important for me to be around for my son, because we almost lost him.” Heading into 2025, thousands of workers face an unsettling reality: after years of working from the comfort of home, they must full-time for the first time since or look for new work. Employees , AT&T and other companies have been five days per week.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to fire federal workers who don’t show up to do their jobs in-person. “People always want to have flexibility,” said Mark Ma, a University of Pittsburgh associate professor of business administration. “I have never heard anyone telling me that I thank my job because it’s so rigid in its schedule.
” Ma researched what happened when technology and finance companies in the S&P 500 stopped allowing employees to work remotely in recent years. He found the companies experienced hig.
