It's funny that you haven't actually said that less work is getting done. It just sounds like you are saying that "working from home" is equivalent to "slacking off", even if you didn't intend it to come out that way.

Maybe people were always "slacking off" at their jobs, they just had to work harder to hide it when people were in the office?

I've been on calls where half a dozen people are trying to find someone to complete some repetitive technical task that isn't easily given to automation. I suspect the idea was to find some poor junior type person to take on the task (preferably in a "best-shored" location). Typically it was me, a senior, who would say, "let me put on some headphones and listen to music, and I'll just work on it". But if I wasn't in those calls, I wonder how many more person-hours would have been spent on something that would take me an afternoon at the most to complete.

All that is to say is that it seemed like there are tons of people caught in a Bullshit Job situation where the job seems to be mainly trying to foist the work off on someone else. And I suspect that a lot of the work they're trying to find owners for is of highly questionable value in the first place.

This was long before the pandemic too, but it does seem like an awakening that other people had in pandemic times.

Are there any indicators that real productivity has in fact declined?

An alternative hypothesis is that a lot of time spent at work was bullshit (ie, unproductive) to start with - only many people have realised it now.

> Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.

That sounds mostly like a good thing. Turns out that killing oneself for maximizing productivity wasn't a smart move, or even necessary for things to work ok.

Not going in to the office is not the same thing as slacking off.

During the 1750s the average work day was 11 hours, 208 days a year (2288).

During the 1860s the average work day was 16 hours, 311 days a year (4976).

During the 1920s the average work day was 8 hours, 243 days a year (1944, and productivity was up according to Henry Ford).

Most tech employers in China pre COVID, 10 hours a day, 297 days a year (2970).

Netherlands pre COVID, 5.8 hours a day, 234 days a year (1357).

US pre COVID, 6.9 hours a day, 239 days a year (1649).

Which one of the above examples cared the most about their jobs? Which was the most productive? In terms of business profit PPP? And wage PPP?

This is pure anecdote. Any evidence of this besides personal experience? I've had a WFH job since before COVID and everyone seems very engaged in what they're doing.