"Oh great! Well if there's no way you'd do a RTO then we shouldn't have any problem writing remote only into my employment contract! I've just sent over the document with this change. Let's sign it, I'm ready to get to work!"

Isn't it amazing what kind of actual blunt answer about somebody's intentions you can get back from people when you send them back a copy of their file with MS Word "Track Changes" enabled and marked up in color, and ask them to approve it before becoming an executed agreement?

Won’t matter in US. At will.

Sure it does. It means they have two options. Let you stay remote, or fire you, but not “for cause” so you still can file unemployment. Otherwise you won’t be able to file.

If a company was truly worried about paying unemployment, they would never bake that into an employment contract. If they aren’t worried about paying unemployment and they want you to RTO, it doesn’t matter what your contract says about your location.

That is a basically a feel good for you, it would mean literally nothing to the company.

I imagine this is the case in most places: recruiters and managers are so far down in the chain that they can't be given information before the rest of the workforce, so they might legitimately not know whether or not a return-to-office plan is in action.

Well, they weren’t lying. No one will be returning to that office, after all.

What's that saying, only a sith deals in absolutes?

Which has always been a rather ironic line lacking in self-awareness.