One interesting job market change I've seen in the past two months has been the return of the private office. After a couple of decades of moving everyone they could into bullpens and other open areas, it appears that some managers see private offices, while not as good as open floorplans, better than having their workers at home completely out of view. Longterm leases and reduced headcount physically in the office makes these private offices, with floor to ceiling walls and doors that close, viable, at least for now. It's still only a single digit percentage of job postings mentioning private offices and it'll be interesting to see if the trend of offering them grows.

It's an new type of carrot, but I doubt it is going to work on very many. Open floorplans were an abomination but the gap between them and a private office is much smaller than the gap between a private office and a home office. For those who don't have a good workspace at home or just prefer to be in the office, private offices might be a nice change. There probably will be a small percentage of extreme extraverts who miss the bullpen type workspace.