Data from high-paying jobs board Ladders, which focuses on jobs that earn more than $100,000 a year, found between the third and fourth quarters of 2023, the total number of highly paid remote job postings fell by about 12%. Highly paid hybrid jobs also dropped 69% during the same time while in-person jobs increased 93%.
“I think we are going to see remote jobs flatten out and in-office jobs will continue to increase their share from the share of those hybrid companies that don’t really want their employees to work from home,” said John Mullinix, director of growth marketing at Ladders, adding companies have had plenty of time to choose an office strategy. “If you are a company not letting employees work remotely, that’s a conscious decision, not a technical limitation.”
While remote job postings dropped overall, the decrease was driven by the highest-paid jobs among the dataset, Mullinix said.
“Jobs that pay $200,000 or more really drove the increase for in-person roles,” he said. “Companies want their highest earners in the office for collaboration and leadership.”
Which industries still offer highly paid remote jobs?
Overall, 11.82% of jobs posted on Ladders were remote jobs, according to Mullinix — still far higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
And despite headlines about widespread layoffs at the largest tech companies, remote jobs were still most likely to be in the technology sector, followed by health care.
Mullinix said he believes at least part of that has to do with the rise of artificial-intelligence tools and platforms.
“AI is creating new opportunities and new ways to serve customers, which is creating more ways for health-care professionals to make money virtually,” he said. “Technologies like that — that were kind of, once upon a time, thought to be not likely — are becoming more prevalent because of AI, and that is increasing the amount of jobs.”
He also said smaller companies are seeing an opportunity to get better talent by going remote, giving them a competitive advantage over larger companies that might emphasize being in the office. An unrelated study by payroll and
benefits platform Gusto Inc. found that to be the case, too, as smaller and younger companies are more likely to recruit remote workers.
About 46% of six-figure remote jobs pay between $100,000 and $150,000, while the next largest chunk is the 25% that pay between $150,000 and $200,000.
The typical remote job pays between $140,000 and $160,000 per year in the technology or health-care sectors, with a range of five to seven years of experience, he added.
“It wasn’t the biggest companies that were paying the most — it was the mid-size companies,” Mullinix said. “They are trying to grow, rather than maintain, their market share.”
Remote work still in high demand Workers continue to seek remote work, with 51% of people favoring a fully remote job while an additional 46% saying they want to be in a hybrid environment, according to employment agency FlexJobs Corp.
Meanwhile, about 63% say having the ability to work remotely is most important to them in a job — a bigger share than those who chose salary, which came in at 61%. Overall, the picture of remote work and return-to-office interests is blurry, at best. The Bureau of Labor Statistics in October 2022 began tracking the number of workers who said they worked from home some or part of the time. That month, 17.9% of workers aged 16 years and older said they were working from home some or all of the time. By October 2023, that number had grown to 19.8%. Two months later, it was 21.9%, although that bump could be partly because of the December holiday season.
Those with more education are more likely to end up in remote jobs, according to the BLS. About 38% of employees with a degree higher than a bachelor’s degree reported working remotely at least part of the time, compared to 2.4% of employees with less than a high school diploma and 7.2% of workers with high school diplomas and no college degree. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau found 26% of households reported someone working remotely as of October 2023, the lowest level since the pandemic began and down from a 33% post-pandemic high.
Stanford University Economics Professor Nick Bloom on Nov. 28 took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to call remote-work numbers “flat as a pancake.” He noted the number of people working remotely had leveled off after falling from its pandemic peak while office occupancy flatlined.
“Return to the office is dead,” Bloom wrote.
Blog Written By: Andy Medici and Pgh Business times