Percentage who later regret each choice. Bars and full ledger render below.
Career
Last reviewed 2026-04-26
Evidence quality 4.25/5
Eight-dimension review score against the
quality rubric
. Each dimension scored 1–5.
D1 Source verification
5/5
D2 Source authority & independence
4/5
D3 Regret-rate accuracy
2/5
D4 Source comparability
5/5
D5 Gilovich pattern
5/5
D6 Prose quality
5/5
D7 Caveat completeness
5/5
D8 Sample quality
3/5
Average4.25/5
Proxy data — no direct regret survey exists for this decision. Rates are derived from satisfaction scores and access-barrier data rather than questions that directly asked about regret. See caveats below.
Action regret
Working remotely
36%
≤36% weakly attached to remote (Pew retention proxy — no direct regret survey exists)
US workers who work from home at least some of the time (Pew)
retrospective, no fixed timeframe
Inaction regret
Working in an office
63%
63% of office workers would prefer remote (Pew preference proxy — no direct regret survey exists)
US workers who rarely or never work from home (Pew)
retrospective, no fixed timeframe
% who regret this choice
Working remotelyWorking in an office
36%63%
inaction dominates — Inaction dominates — most regret not acting.
Related decisions
Semantically similar decisions — same territory, different trade-offs.
No survey asks workers directly whether they regret going remote or staying in
the office, so the cleanest available signal is what people say they would
choose if they could. The Pew Research Center’s January 2025 report is lopsided
on the office side: 63% of workers who rarely or never work from home say
that, given the choice, they would prefer to work from home most or some of the
time; within that same office group, 19% would choose to work from home all the
time and only 17% would opt to keep rarely or never working remotely. Pew,
however, publishes no matching “would prefer the office” figure for people who
already work remotely, so the two sides cannot be compared like-for-like. What
Pew does show about remote workers is attachment: 46% of current remote
workers say they would be unlikely to stay at their job if their employer
eliminated work-from-home, and a smaller 36% say they would be likely to
stay — the closest thing to a low-regret ceiling on the remote side. The
pattern is consistent with Gilovich and Medvec’s long-term inaction-dominance
finding — sticking with the office when a flexible alternative exists leaves
more people wishing they had chosen otherwise — but the magnitudes on the two
sides come from different questions and should be read as directional.
A separate satisfaction survey points the same direction without being a regret
measure. The Global Work-Life Survey by Remote, the Future Workforce Alliance,
and IE Business School found 65% of remote workers “extremely satisfied”
with their jobs versus just 34% of office-based employees. That is a
satisfaction gap, not a regret rate: an earlier version of this entry inverted
those top-box scores (treating everyone not “extremely satisfied” as
regretful), which counted merely “very satisfied” workers as dissatisfied and
inflated both numbers. Those inverted figures (35% and 66%) have been dropped.
The main caveat is measurement. “Would prefer the other arrangement” still is
not lived regret — someone content in the office who would mildly prefer
flexibility counts in the 63%, so the proxy can overstate true regret. The
direction is robust across independent surveys; the absolute magnitudes should
be read as upper bounds. The often-quoted Envoy figure that “80% of bosses
regret return-to-office plans” is excluded here as a worker-level rate: it
measures executives’ process regret about how their company handled RTO, a
different population and a different construct. The Pew sample is US adults;
remote-work norms vary across countries.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Pew Research Center — Many remote workers say they'd be likely to leave their job if they could no longer work from home
Primary study
46% of current remote workers would be unlikely to stay if remote work were eliminated; a smaller 36% say they'd be likely to stay
Excerpt
“"46% say that if their employer no longer allowed them to work from home, they would be unlikely to stay at their current job. This includes 26% who say they'd be very unlikely to stay. A smaller share (36%) say they'd be likely to stay at their job, with 20% saying they'd be very likely to do so."
”
Source data from
2025-01-13
Accessed
2026-06-30
Calculation
Pew Research Center analysis based primarily on 2,315 US working adults, from a larger survey conducted Oct 7-13, 2024. No survey asks remote workers directly whether they regret going remote, and Pew reports NO figure for current remote workers who would prefer the office. (An earlier version of this entry displayed Pew's "17% would opt for rarely or never working from home" as a remote-worker office-preference — but that 17% is drawn from the OFFICE subgroup, workers who rarely/never work from home, so it measured office-worker contentment, not remote-worker regret; it has been removed.) The only correctly-populated remote-side signal Pew provides is the retention question: 46% of current remote workers would be unlikely to stay if WFH ended (strong attachment / low regret), while a smaller 36% say they'd be likely to stay — i.e. would tolerate losing remote work. We use that 36% "likely to stay even if WFH ended" share as a deliberately generous UPPER BOUND on weak attachment to remote (proxy_only). It overstates true regret — someone content remote who would still stay if forced back counts in it — so read it as a ceiling, not a regret rate. We do not derive any figure from a satisfaction score.
[2]Remote / Future Workforce Alliance / IE Business School — Remote workers are happier and healthier than in-office counterparts, survey finds
Primary study
65% of remote workers reported being 'extremely satisfied' with their jobs, vs 34% of office-based employees (satisfaction, not regret)
Excerpt
“"65% of remote workers said they were 'extremely satisfied' with their jobs, compared to just 34% of office-based employees. 42% of remote workers rated themselves as '8' or above on a happiness scale out of 10, compared to just 21% of office workers."
”
Source data from
2024-06-15
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Remote / Future Workforce Alliance / IE Business School Global Work-Life Survey of 1,000 workers across five continents. Included only as satisfaction context — remote workers report markedly higher job satisfaction than office workers. We do NOT invert the "extremely satisfied" share into a regret rate; non-top-box satisfaction is not regret. The headline action rate comes from the Pew retention proxy above.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
1/2 sources independently verified verbatim against the cited source
[1]Pew Research Center — Many remote workers say they'd be likely to leave their job if they could no longer work from home
Verified
Primary study
63% of workers who rarely or never work from home say that, if they could choose, they'd work from home most or some of the time
Excerpt
“"63% of those who rarely or never work from home now say that, if they could choose, they'd work from home most or some of the time. About one-in-five (19%) say they'd choose to work from home all the time, and 17% say they'd opt for rarely or never working from home."
”
Source data from
2025-01-13
Accessed
2026-06-30
Verification
Excerpt independently re-fetched and confirmed word-for-word against the cited source during our grounding audit.
Calculation
Pew Research Center analysis based primarily on 2,315 US working adults, from a larger survey conducted Oct 7-13, 2024. No survey asks office workers directly whether they regret not going remote, so we use the revealed-preference proxy Pew states verbatim: among workers who rarely or never work from home, 63% would prefer to work from home most or some of the time if they could choose, 19% would choose to work from home all the time, and only 17% would opt to keep working rarely or never from home. This is a "would reverse the choice" preference measure within the office subgroup, not a satisfaction inversion.
[2]Remote / Future Workforce Alliance / IE Business School — Remote workers are happier and healthier than in-office counterparts, survey finds
Primary study
Only 34% of office-based employees reported being 'extremely satisfied' with their jobs, vs 65% of remote workers (satisfaction, not regret)
Excerpt
“"65% of remote workers said they were 'extremely satisfied' with their jobs, compared to just 34% of office-based employees. 42% of remote workers rated themselves as '8' or above on a happiness scale out of 10, compared to just 21% of office workers."
”
Source data from
2024-06-15
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Same Global Work-Life Survey. Office workers report much lower job satisfaction than remote workers (34% vs 65% extremely satisfied). Included only as satisfaction context. We do NOT invert the 34% top-box share into a 66% regret rate — non-top-box satisfaction is not regret. The headline inaction rate comes from the Pew preference proxy above. (The widely cited Envoy figure that "80% of bosses regret return-to-office plans" measures EXECUTIVES' process regret about their company's RTO strategy, not individual office workers regretting in-person work, so it is not used as the worker-level rate here.)
Caveats
Neither rate is a direct regret measure, and the two sides rest on DIFFERENT proxies. No published survey asks "do you regret choosing remote work?" or "do you regret not going remote?". For the office (inaction) side, Pew's January 2025 report gives a clean, correctly- populated preference proxy: 63% of workers who rarely or never work from home would, given a free choice, prefer to work from home most or some of the time. For the remote (action) side, Pew reports NO comparable "would prefer the office" figure for current remote workers; its "17% would opt for rarely or never working from home" is drawn from the OFFICE subgroup, not remote workers, so it does not measure remote-work regret and is not used here. The only correctly-populated remote-side signal is the retention question — 46% of current remote workers would be unlikely to stay if WFH ended (strong attachment / low regret), while a smaller 36% would be likely to stay. We report that 36% as a deliberately generous upper bound on weak attachment to remote work, not as a regret rate; it overstates true regret because someone content remote who would still tolerate a return-to-office counts in it. Because the action-side proxy is a ceiling rather than a like-for-like preference measure, the −0.27 delta between the two sides should be read as directional, not precise. An earlier version of this entry inverted "extremely satisfied" survey percentages into regret rates (35% and 66%); that conflated mild satisfaction with regret and has been removed. The Remote/IE Business School satisfaction survey is retained only as context (remote workers report higher satisfaction than office workers) and was fielded by a company with a commercial interest in remote-work adoption, introducing potential framing and sampling bias. The often-cited Envoy "80% of bosses regret return-to-office plans" figure measures executives' process regret about their company's RTO strategy — a different population and construct — so it is not used as a worker-level office regret rate. The Pew data is US adults; cross-national remote-work norms differ.
