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It's important to distinguish between the general form of leased small office space and the WeWork model. In a recession, I feel it's pretty likely companies would look at their expense numbers and decide that WeWork is way too expensive in comparison to options like Regis, work from home, or just eliminating workers outside the main office.

Wouldn't anyone spending money on that just cheap out and go with a library or cafe or home-office to save money? Sure, not working at home is great for productivity for some people, but when push comes to shove, their customers can largely move elsewhere, right?

Maybe if you work alone. But there are plenty of corporate customers of WeWork who will never, ever tell their employees to "work out of a cafe".

The problem of course is that not all customers are big corporates - some are small firms that will scale back spending, or even close, if a recession hits.

> short term, flexible office space more

This is more appealing to businesses who don't want large capital expenditures, which could or could not be related to a recession. It's more related to market trends and access to a lot of cheap capital.

Less. Small businesses die like flies in a recession