Off Site Workers: The Great Unbundling of the Traditional Workplace
Did you know that by 2025, an estimated 32.6 million Americans will be classified as off site workers? This seismic shift, accelerated by crisis but sustained by choice and technology, is far more than a workplace trend. It represents a core tenet of what author J.Y. Sterling calls "The Great Unbundling"—the systematic separation of human capabilities that have been bundled together for millennia. The move to a remote workplace is not just changing where we work, but fundamentally unbundling physical presence from productivity, community from career, and ultimately, human labor from its traditional economic anchors.
This transformation holds distinct implications for every mind grappling with the future:
- For the AI-Curious Professional: You will understand how the tools enabling working virtually are the precursors to AI-driven automation, creating digital workflows that make cognitive tasks ripe for unbundling.
- For the Philosophical Inquirer: You will explore how the decentralized workforce challenges our deep-seated ideas of the "job," the "colleague," and the very fabric of social capital built through physical interaction.
- For the Aspiring AI Ethicist: You will gain a data-driven perspective on the large-scale societal and economic shifts triggered by this new era of labor, substantiated by the latest statistics on remote workers in the US.
The Remote Workplace: Unbundling Presence from Productivity
For centuries, value creation was tethered to a physical location. The factory floor, the corner office, the boardroom—these spaces bundled human capital. A person's analytical skills, collaborative input, and professional identity were all assumed to exist in the same geographic spot. As J.Y. Sterling argues in The Great Unbundling, this model of the "bundled ape" has been the default for human economic history.
The modern remote workplace, powered by a suite of digital tools like Slack, Asana, and Zoom, has shattered this paradigm. It has successfully unbundled presence from productivity. The data now confirms this decoupling is not a temporary anomaly but a permanent feature of the economic landscape.
A 2025 study by Gallup reveals the stark new reality for remote-capable jobs:
- 52% of employees operate in a hybrid model.
- 27% work exclusively as off site workers.
- Only 21% remain fully on-site.
This unbundling offers newfound flexibility, a key driver for employee satisfaction. However, it also serves as the critical first step in a much deeper technological disruption, paving the way for the unbundling of cognitive work itself.
Working Virtually: A Gateway to Cognitive Automation
The transition to working virtually does more than just digitize meetings; it digitizes and modularizes entire workflows. When a team collaborates on a project remotely, their processes—from brainstorming on a digital whiteboard to assigning tasks in a project management system—create a perfect, legible data trail.
This is where the connection to AI becomes undeniable. As Sterling's framework posits, capitalism is the engine of unbundling, and the digitized workflows of remote work are the fuel. Every task broken down into a digital component becomes a task that an AI can be trained to analyze, optimize, and eventually execute.
Consider the Goldman Sachs report projecting that 300 million jobs are exposed to automation. This isn't just about robots on an assembly line. It's about cognitive and creative tasks. An AI can be trained on the data from a thousand remote marketing campaigns to generate copy, or analyze ten thousand virtual legal consultations to draft a contract. The act of working virtually prepares the ground for this next, more profound, wave of unbundling.
Statistics on Remote Workers US: A Snapshot of the New Economy
The data on remote workers US paints a clear picture of a workforce that has fundamentally reorganized itself. This isn't a coastal trend or a tech-industry quirk; it is a widespread demographic and economic shift.
- Productivity Gains: Contrary to the fears of many executives, remote work has proven to be a productivity catalyst. A landmark Stanford study found a 13% productivity increase in remote workers. More recent 2025 data from ActivTrak found that fully remote employees log 51 more productive minutes per day compared to their in-office or hybrid counterparts.
- The Unwavering Demand for Flexibility: The preference for remote options is a powerful economic force. A 2025 Robert Half survey found that 48% of job seekers desire a hybrid role, and 26% want a fully remote position. This demand is so strong that Gallup found 6 in 10 exclusively remote employees would be "extremely likely" to seek other employment if this flexibility were revoked.
- Educational and Demographic Divides: The unbundling is not uniform. Data from April 2025 shows a strong correlation between remote work and education. 38.3% of those with a bachelor's degree or higher can work remotely, compared to just 8.4% of high school graduates. This highlights a growing chasm in the labor market, where the ability to become an off site worker is a new form of professional privilege.
Flexible Working: A Double-Edged Sword in the Unbundling Era
The introduction of flexible working introduced due to remote working is perhaps the most celebrated aspect of this new era. It offers employees unprecedented autonomy to integrate life and work, a form of "re-bundling" on their own terms. According to a 2025 report from We Work Remotely, employees rank "spending time with loved ones" and "taking care of mental health" as higher priorities than work itself—a shift enabled by flexibility.
However, this flexibility is a double-edged sword within the "Great Unbundling" framework.
- The Benefit (Human Agency): Individuals can consciously "re-bundle" their lives, prioritizing family, health, or personal projects. This aligns with the human counter-current Sterling describes, where we seek to create new forms of purpose.
- The Risk (Total Legibility): Asynchronous and flexible work demands meticulous tracking. Every task, every contribution, every minute of work is logged. This creates a hyper-detailed record of an employee's output, unbundled from the traditional 9-to-5 workday. While useful for performance reviews, this same data is the perfect training material for an AI designed to perform the same function more efficiently and at a lower cost.
The Human Cost: Unbundling Community from Career
For generations, the workplace was a primary source of social capital. It was where people found mentors, built friendships, and experienced a sense of belonging. The rise of the permanent off site worker threatens to unbundle genuine community from our professional lives.
Gallup's 2025 research touches on this tension: while fully remote workers report the highest levels of engagement, they also report higher instances of stress and loneliness. The spontaneous "weak ties"—the casual conversations in the breakroom or the impromptu problem-solving sessions—are difficult to replicate virtually. These interactions are crucial for innovation, mentorship, and a robust organizational culture.
This parallels Sterling's argument about social media algorithms unbundling validation from genuine connection. In the remote workplace, we may get positive feedback on a project (validation) without the underlying sense of shared purpose and camaraderie (connection). This erosion of social fabric is a significant, often overlooked, cost of unbundling the office.
The Great Re-bundling: How to Thrive as an Off Site Worker
Acknowledging the inevitability of unbundling does not mean succumbing to it. The future belongs to those who engage in what J.Y. Sterling terms "The Great Re-bundling"—a conscious effort to reintegrate capabilities in new, resilient, and uniquely human ways.
For Individuals:
- Focus on Un-automatable Skills: Double down on capabilities that are difficult to unbundle and digitize: complex critical thinking, empathetic leadership, ethical reasoning, and cross-domain creativity.
- Re-bundle Your Professional Identity: Move from being a "task-executor" to a "problem-solver" or "strategist." Your value is not in completing the items on a digital to-do list, but in your ability to synthesize information and connect with others to drive outcomes.
- Intentionally Build Community: Proactively schedule virtual coffees, offer mentorship, and create spaces for non-transactional conversation with your colleagues.
For Organizations:
- Design for Connection: Invest in leadership training that equips managers to foster psychological safety and trust in a remote environment.
- Synchronize for a Purpose: Use "anchor days" or structured hybrid models not for solo work, but for intentional, high-value collaboration, brainstorming, and culture-building activities.
- Rethink Performance Metrics: Move beyond simple output tracking. Reward the employees who mentor others, ask insightful questions, and contribute to a healthy, collaborative remote culture.
The Future is Remote, But Our Response is Human
The era of the off site worker is here to stay. It is the leading edge of a profound economic and social unbundling driven by technology. While this presents a direct challenge to the traditional value of bundled human labor, it is not a dystopian mandate. It is a call to action.
We have the agency to shape our response. By understanding the forces of unbundling, we can proactively re-bundle our skills, our communities, and our sense of purpose to thrive in a world where presence and productivity are forever separate.
To delve deeper into the forces reshaping our world and explore the full framework of The Great Unbundling, purchase your copy of J.Y. Sterling's "The Great Unbundling: How Artificial Intelligence is Redefining the Value of a Human Being." For ongoing analysis and insights into navigating this new landscape, subscribe to our newsletter.