This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 10th,

2022. I'm Caleb Brown.

In the new Cato Institute book Empowering the New American Workers,

Scholars address myriad ways that the feds, states, and localities can adjust labor and related

policies, all in the interest of giving workers maximum flexibility and range of movement

to lead more productive and fulfilling professional lives.

Scott Linsicum is the book's editor and author of multiple chapters.

Many of the books chapters are available today at Cato.org.

The pandemic presented sort of unprecedented challenges at least with a whole lot of what we would otherwise take for granted which is the rate at which

Unemployment increases or decreases the degree to which state governments are encouraged

to perhaps loosen a whole bunch of restrictions all at once in order to accommodate a lot of new workplace arrangements.

So I'm sure I'm leaving a whole bunch out.

So how has life changed for average workers in the last two and a half years?

Well, yeah, there's been some fundamental changes, you know, starting with the fact that we were all stuck in our homes for at least a month

you had a really dramatic rise in remote work based less on the emergence of new technologies

and more on the emergence of new technologies and more on the necessity.

And then of course once people got used to remote work,

both employees and bosses,

they realized there was a lot of good stuff about remote work and they realized that on the

employee side they really liked remote work. they liked being avoiding that commute they liked being

able to you know pick their kids up from school or soccer practice or whatever and then you

know hop back in to the virtual office employers

...