The pandemic transformed the suburbs. Return-to-office mandates could reshape them again.

In her own small way, Jen Rademacher helped make the suburbs hot.

It was the height of the pandemic when Rademacher and her husband joined other white-collar professionals fleeing the Twin Cities and its suburbs. They left denser neighborhoods in search of more space and cheaper real estate, settling in outlying suburbs, exurbs and even greater Minnesota cities thanks to the flexibility of remote work.

Five years and two kids later, Rademacher now has a lot less flexibility — and a much longer commute. When Cargill recently called her and other workers back to the office at least three days a week, it joined a flurry of Minnesota employers making similar moves, from Target to Medtronic to General Mills, with the goal of reviving office culture.

That’s buoyed politicians who hope the influx of commuters will help struggling business areas in Minneapolis and St. Paul. But the focus on downtown has obscured how this major change in work habits could reshape the places where many white-collar workers live: the suburbs.

Experts say it’s too early to tell if these employees will relocate en masse to the cities, or if spending in the suburbs will sink. But people who study population trends in Minnesota contend the state could be on the precipice of a major, albeit gradual, demographic shift.

“In 2020, we saw the temporary end of urbanization in Minnesota,” said Megan Dayton, a senior demographer at the Minnesota State Demographic Center, adding that “I think what ends up happening over the next five to ten years, we start to see a slow trickle back to that urbanization.”

But suburbanization might be here to stay. Many workers say they plan to remain in their new neighborhoods, even if that means adapting to more rigid schedules — or quitting outright.

Arjun Ramani, the co-author of a paper titled “How working from home reshapes cities,” said the pandemic led to a “donut effect” in major cities, pushing economic activity away from urban centers and toward the suburbs.

The change in spending manifested in Minnesota. Outlying communities and rural townships replaced urban neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs as some of the hottest housing markets in 2021. Some greater Minnesota cities that were losing people for years saw an influx of new residents, Dayton said.

Could return-to-office mandates wipe away those trends?

Probably not, said Ramani, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ramani noted that most companies are calling employees back to the office only two or three days a week, and many white-collar workers are already splitting their time between the office and home. Occasionally commuting downtown, he said, won’t herald the dramatic lifestyle changes that could convince someone to relocate to the city.

The return-to-office push doesn’t seem to have seriously dented spending in the suburbs. People who work at gyms, restaurants and coffee shops beyond the Twin Cities say they’re still seeing a steady stream of customers — just at different times.

At Tapestry Coffee in Lakeville, barista Benjamin Dewing said the shop has never been busier. Most customers are professionals leaving the south metro suburb in the morning for work, not the remote workers who posted up at coffee shops with laptops during the pandemic.

“And then weekends are just chaos,” Dewing said.

And not every white-collar worker who lives in the suburbs is spending their days — and their dollars — downtown. Plenty of companies are based outside Minneapolis and St. Paul, including 3M in Maplewood, whose restaurants and businesses stand to benefit as workers return to the company’s sprawling campus, Maplewood Mayor Marylee Abrams said.

“I think it’s going to give our community a boost in terms of economic vitality,” Abrams said.

Kimberly Dobos, a state employee, said it’s easier to collaborate with colleagues in the office. But she laments the money she now spends on gas, parking and bus fares to commute from Inver Grove Heights to downtown St. Paul. And she wonders if she will soon have to hire someone to look after her 75-year-old mother, with whom she lives, while at work.

Indeed, the state’s decision to mandate employees work in the office at least 50% of the time generated backlash. Many viewed the move as more beneficial to property owners in St. Paul’s struggling business corridors than the thousands of state workers, said Dayton, the demographer who’s also the president of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees.

Dobos said she believes the mandate has led to a flurry of retirements. When she recently turned in a former colleague’s equipment to the IT department, she was startled to find a growing “pile of computers.”

As for the longevity of her career with the state?