Larry Fink Wants Future With Just 50% of Workers in Offices

(Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said the world could be a lot greener if office buildings never reached their full capacity again.

If just half of workers returned to offices, traffic in cities would be eased and employees’ quality of life would be improved, Fink said Tuesday during an International Monetary Fund virtual event hosted by Bloomberg Television.

“As we move more and more towards a digital society, the need for hydrocarbons will be reduced,” Fink said. “I want a future in which only 50% of workers are working in offices. And the other 50% -- we could rotate -- are working from home.”

The Covid-19 pandemic forced companies to move to almost entirely remote work setups. Big corporations are wrestling with whether and how to shepherd their employees back to office buildings.

“This horrible, horrible societal impact of Covid and the impact to health is creating some big, giant macro changes which are, in my mind, blessings for society,” Fink said.

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