Q&A: Why office dress codes keep getting more casual

If you work in an office, what did you wear today? “Dressing up for work continues to go out of style,” according to a survey released last week by OfficeTeam, an arm of the office-staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. Half of the senior managers interviewed in the survey said their workers wear less formal clothing than they did five years ago, and 47% said their employees dressed “too casually.” The survey also showed that 32% of managers said their workers showed “too much skin.” Another sign of the times: Banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. now lets workers wear business-casual clothing most of the time instead of the once de rigueur suits, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Second, you think about how many millennials are in the workforce today — it’s over 60% — and one of the very appealing things to a millennial is a casual dress code. In our survey, you’ve got 58% of individuals said they would prefer a business casual dress code or a casual dress code. More casual dress codes seem to be the trend when economic times are good and it’s an employee-driven market.