In the past week, automaker Stellantis and retailer Home Depot became the latest major companies to call employees back to the office five days a week.
They join employers like Instagram, Paramount and Amazon in recent return-to-office mandates. About one-third of all U.S. firms (34%) are requiring workers to be in the office full time, according to workforce insight provider Flex Index.
The new rules set up a growing tension between employers and their teams: While executives tout fully on-site work as aiding efficiency, creativity and culture, it’s the least popular setup for all workers — particularly the youngest cohorts in their 20s and 30s. Experts warn this clash could lead to employee burnout, disengagement and brain drain if top performers leave for better jobs and those in the middle feel increasingly stuck.
Together, Generation Z and millennials, generally considered those born between 1981 and 2012, make up more than half of the 170-million person U.S. labor force and are the least interested in full-time office attendance.
Just 6% of Gen Z workers want to work fully in-person, along with 4% of millennials, 9% of Gen X, and 10% of baby boomers, according to Gallup data. Most workers prefer hybrid work, a schedule that includes both remote and in-office days each week, with a whopping 71% of Gen Z workers citing hybrid as their top choice.
Yet more workers are feeling pressure to comply with RTO mandates due to the tightening job market, with weak hiring gains in 2025 and an uptick in long-term unemployment. U.S. employers added 584,000 jobs last year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, making 2025 the worst year for total job gains outside of a recession since 2003, according to Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. And while unemployment rates have remained steady at 4.4% in December, a growing share, 26% of those unemployed, have been without work for six months or more.
Just 40% of employees said in December they’d quit or look for another remote job if they were given a mandatory RTO notice. That compared to 91% who said they would in January 2025, according to a survey of 1,000 workers from MyPerfectResume. This indicates that employees — even if they’re unhappy about it — are getting more accustomed to being back in the office full-time.
Workers are “choosing to stay in jobs and hunker down and accept things they would not normally accept,” including increased attendance rules, more responsibilities, smaller raises and so on, says Jasmine Escalera, a career expert for LiveCareer, an online career platform.
This added stress could lead to lower engagement, where workers feel detached from their jobs and pull back on their effort at work, especially for the youngest workers who are used to a world of hybrid work and value flexibility, but are also the least tenured and most job-insecure, Escalera says.
Younger workers have already experienced the largest declines in workplace engagement since 2020, according to Gallup, with Gen Z and young millennials reporting the biggest drops in “feeling cared about, having opportunities to learn and being developed at work.”
“My biggest guess is we’ll see more compliance with RTO mandates than before,” Escalera says. “But that compliance may not be due to the fact that employees are like, ‘Yes put me back into the office; I’m ready to go.'”
RTO rules could drive high performers to quit, even in a cooling job market
While many workers may grit their teeth and hang on, new RTO rules could lead others to quit.
That may be the point, says Nick Bloom, a Stanford economics professor who researches work-from-home dynamics. Companies may want some workers to voluntarily leave so they can cut costs on headcount and layoffs.
“One way to lose about 5% to 10% of staff is to make them all come in five days a week,” Bloom says. “For every person that quits because of the RTO, that is one less person that needs a redundancy package.”
Of course, leaders have listed other reasons for asking people to be fully back in office, including to boost productivity, innovation and business performance and to strengthen skill development and company culture.
“In-person engagement enables more meaningful support for store and field associates, drives results and reinforces our people-centric culture and inverted pyramid,” Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said in a message to employees last week.
Bringing colleagues together can improve an in-person company culture, says Escalera, as long as leaders make an effort to help people collaborate in the office and invite creativity and new ideas.
Since reporting to the office five days a week was the norm for most people until the pandemic, leaders may feel managing in the office is more familiar and comfortable, says Mark Ma, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh.
The recent RTO announcements could have a domino effect across industries, he says, where executives in favor of the setup become more outspoken about ratcheting up attendance rules at their own organizations.
However, these mandates could have unintended consequences. People who quit following new RTO rules tend to be top performers and experienced employees with a lot of leverage, Ma says.
“The probability of more skilled employees departing after RTO mandates is 77% higher than that of less skilled workers,” Ma says, “and the probability of senior employees departing after RTO mandates is 36% higher than that of junior workers.”
His research has also shown that RTO disproportionately leads working parents and caregivers (often women) and people with disabilities who require workplace accommodations to quit.
Anecdotally, Ma says he’s already heard of senior talent looking for new jobs after the recent spate of RTO announcements.
“The vast majority of firms are still allowing workers to have a hybrid schedule,” he says, noting that these employers will have an easier time courting top talent.
Want to get ahead at work with AI? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, Beyond the Basics: How to Use AI to Supercharge Your Work. Learn advanced AI skills like building custom GPTs and using AI agents to boost your productivity today.
