Gee and Ursula: Coming back to the office impacts women, traffic, economy

A piece The Seattle Times published Thursday, citing U.S. Census data, showed the number of people going back to the office is increasing and those working from home is steadily decreasing. The number of Seattle residents who worked remotely most days fell from an estimated 165,000 in 2022 to about 133,000 last year. That’s a significant 20% drop, the Times noted.

As Seattleites filter back to their offices during the week, traffic gets more congested and as a 2021 story from Bloomberg explained, many women who got pushed to go back to the office ended up getting pushed out of the workforce.

However, on the flip side local businesses see a positive shift when workers spend money downtown.

When Amazon announced that it was changing its attendance policy to require five days of work per week in the office again instead of three, it was seen as a good thing by many people who would be impacted.

“Downtown’s largest employer bringing people back more frequently is a home run for downtown. Amazon’s decision reinforces the value of in-person work to the success of companies and organizations,” Downtown Seattle Association President and CEO Jon Scholes said in a statement sent to KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest on Sept. 16.

On Thursday, “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio discussed how the flood of workers will impact the city.

Co-host of “Gee and Ursula” Gee Scott brought up sales tax.

“When you have people not going to the dry cleaners anymore and you have people not going to these restaurants anymore, you have sales tax goes lower, so the money, the pool of that is lower, considering we don’t have a state income tax now,” Gee said.

He noted that while Amazon is pulling workers back to the office, working from home actually benefits the company because people don’t have to leave their house to shop.

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Gee brought up another point, that he said might make people mad, which is being able to work a second job because of being at home.

“Some folks got them second jobs and ain’t declared them second jobs, you see what I’m saying, and so it’s gonna mess it up if you got to go back to work,” he said.

Gee added that it feels as if the people working from home are making more money than the essential workers who have to be at work everyday.

“Gee and Ursula” co-host Ursula Reutin asked Scott, who has a lengthy commute, if his push for workers to return to office is going to backfire because it just means more people on the road?

“I’m sick and tired of being in my car for three, three and a half hours almost every single day, (I’m) getting tired of that,” Gee responded. “But also we can’t sustain, though, as far as you start talking about revenue and dollars here in a state.”

Working from home a ‘quality of life improvement’

“Gee and Ursula” producer Andrew Lanier jumped in, saying “Seattle’s tax revenue is not the problem or responsibility of workers and it shouldn’t be.”

“I’d personally rather my dollars stay in my own community, go to my own community coffee shop, spend my money there,” he said.

Lanier continued saying working from home “is the single biggest quality of life improvement that most workers, who have this opportunity will ever have, and it will do nothing but hurt women who will be pushed out of the workforce to higher rates than men.”

He added that moving back to office is bad for the environment and climate.

“My last career before I was here was work from home and I worked 12 hours a day,” Andrew said. “And I’m not kidding you. There are a lot of people who work really, really hard.”

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To which Ursula said, she agrees and believes those people should be able to continue working at home.

But Gee responded, “Do you know anyone working from home who works eight to 10 hours every single day? I don’t know anybody.”

“But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” Ursula added.

Before engaging on this topic on his show, Gee also shared his opinions about returning back to office on “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio Thursday morning.

Listen to Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin weekday mornings from 9 a.m.- noon on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Julia Dallas is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read her stories here. Follow Julia on X here and email her here.