Apple Headquarters in Cupertino and Tim Cook (Wikipedia)
Apple will delay its employees’ return to the office by a month, becoming the latest company to change its plans as the Delta variant spreads.
Employees were expected to return to the office in early September. They are now expected to return by Oct. 1 at the earliest, according to the New York Times.
The company is planning to give a month’s notice before any return to the office, giving them the option to push the date back as necessary. Some employees on the technical and manufacturing side are already back in person, but many of the company’s national offices have remained remote.
Many employees around the country have been resisting calls to return to the office. Some employees have even considered quitting their jobs as they reevaluate their priorities amid the pandemic in what some economists are calling the “Great Resignation.”
For many companies, a return to the office was predicated on falling Covid cases. As the Delta variant surges, however, the numbers are starting to increase across the country.
In New York City, the rate of positive cases was 1.72 percent on July 18, an increase from 1.37 percent a week earlier. Chicago reported a 1.67 percent positivity rate on July 16, up from 1.06 percent a week earlier. In Florida, the positivity rate last week was 11.5 percent, a jump from 7.8 percent in the prior week.
And in Los Angeles, the positivity rate has increased to 4.1 percent on Monday, from 0.4 percent on June 15, according to Deadline. A new indoor mask mandate is in place in the city.
[NYT] — Holden Walter-Warner
