One million more employees are expected to report back to the office post-Labor Day

Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. And for many workers, this year it could also mean they need to start slogging back to the office.

The latest. Nearly 1 million workers may be heading back to the office this week, according to data from commercial real estate investment company JLL.

This comes on the heels of an Insider report that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees that workers could come to the office or “leave the company” in an August internal meeting.

“It’s past the time to disagree and commit,” Jassy reportedly told employees. “And if you can't disagree and commit, I also understand that, but it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week, and it’s not right for all of our teammates to be in three days a week and for people to refuse to do so.”

During an earlier internal meeting, Jassy wouldn’t share data behind his RTO decision and instead called it a “judgment call,” according to a leaked recording obtained by Insider.

He isn’t alone in his feelings on RTO. Other business leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jamie Dimon, and Michael Bloomberg, believe that employees should be in the office, and that remote work is not effective.

However, according to an August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in partnership with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Stanford University, executives anticipate that 11.2% of employees will be fully remote in 2028, up from 10.2% now and 4.3% five years ago.

Regardless of what some CEOs may want, remote work will likely persist to some extent, long after summer…and the summer after that.