The Next Phase of the Remote Work Boom
The Great resignation is tied to the Remote work Boom and neither are abating in 2022 or likely to in 2023.
Hey Guys,
I wanted to explore a bit about the rise of Remote work since the pandemic began with some data. Tl;dr Remote jobs have tripled during the pandemic and show no sign of slowing down.
Though people are returning to in-office work, the option for remote work remains high and is likely to keep growing, this is even more true for software engineers, machine learning engineers, data engineers and so forth.
Remote Work is Thriving
The share of jobs that explicitly say workers can be remote has nearly tripled from pre-pandemic, from roughly 4% of in 2019 to nearly 12% of jobs in 2022, according to ZipRecruiter data.
With the great resignation still leading to over 3.5 million quits a month in the U.S., remote work is driving a continual great reshuffle that has been the new normal even with some startup and tech job cuts.
If you have software programming, data engineer, cloud or machine learning skills - there’s never been a better time than to be a remote worker.
Top Remote Companies Hiring via ZipRecruiter
Here are the top 10 companies hiring for the largest share of remote-capable jobs on ZipRecruiter in 2022:
Anthem: 60,445 remote jobs listed this year
CBRE: 51,304 remote jobs listed this year
USAA: 42,311 remote jobs listed this year
Capital One: 36,336 remote jobs listed this year
Cerebral: 34,526 remote jobs listed this year
Change Healthcare: 30,602 remote jobs listed this year
Meta: 29,052 remote jobs listed this year
SAP: 282,62 remote jobs listed this year
Kronos: 25,965 remote jobs listed this year
SelectQuote: 25,799 remote jobs listed this year
How Ubiquitous is Remote Work in Technological Society?
Upwards of 60% of job seekers hope to find remote opportunities, according to ZipRecruiter data. And a similar share, 56%, of full-time U.S. workers — more than 70 million people — say their job can be done working remotely from home, according to Gallup.
That’s a lot of jobs.
Source: Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED
The Great Resignation is the New Normal in America
More than 4 million people quit their jobs in August, marking the 15th straight month where as many people left their old jobs for something new.
There are whispers that quit quitting, overemployment, mental health burnout and other factors are literally reducing productivity among workers in 2022.
So what is going on?
Remote Work and Minority Workers in Tech
Women are more likely than men to prefer remote work, and Black, Asian American and Latino workers are more likely than white peers to want the setup, per ZipRecruiter. Workplace experts have said throughout the pandemic that a greater adoption of flexible work arrangements could help boost company diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Women more likely to prefer remote work
Black, Asian Americans and Latin-X populations more likely to prefer remote work
Why that is, is not entirely clear.
Great Reshuffle among Software Engineers
A desire for remote work, and the ease of taking new work in a remote setting, are both driving some of the turnover in the labor market, furthermore it’s making it easier for some professionals like software engineers to find better opportunities and more learning on a regular basis.
Pressure to work from the office is also not the future of work. GenZ and younger Millennials are driving quits at historical levels. As of August, 2022 - a crazy high 11% of workers said they were dissatisfied with their job and looking for another where they could work from home. Among those out of work, 8% quit an in-person job to look for a work-from-home position.
Remote work preference is thus driving a new future of work that will change the very dynamics of the labor force and future of work in the 2020s.
Meanwhile more countries are creating “nomadic” remote-work Visas like Portugal recently. The 2020s may really be the decade remote work becomes more mainstream, even with weird RTO and hybrid-work compromises by some companies.
The clash of the old and the new is still causing some tension and some Great Resignation momentum. A desire for remote work, and the ease of taking new work in a remote setting, are both driving some of the turnover in the labor market.
Remote work as more Frugal with Inflation
Since the beginning of 2022, workers say Covid concerns are becoming less of a reason for wanting to work remotely, but a desire to save on commuting costs has gone up considerably. The typical job-seeker would even take a 14% pay cut in order to work remotely, with younger workers and higher earners willing to give up even more for the flexibility.
Remote Work is Booming due to Improved Well-Being
Among recent job-switchers, 14% said changing jobs allowed them to move into a role that could be done remotely, and they reported feeling more satisfied and engaged in their new position than in-office employees.
If people are happier, they will simply want to continue doing that, no matter what management or industry trends are at the time.
Employers have responded to high turnover by raising pay and offering new benefits, like remote and flexible work. But so far, it hasn’t been enough to temper disruptive turnover. In the talent competition and labor market supply demand dislocation, retaining employees is getting harder.
The Future is Remote Work
In so many ways the data indicates we won’t be returning to a 2019 type world, we are changed forever.
Looking ahead, Gallup estimates 55% of jobs in the future will be done in a hybrid setup, and 22% will be done fully remote — nearly three times the share of exclusively remote jobs available before the pandemic. It projects just 23% of jobs will be done exclusively from a worksite, down from 60% of solely in-person work done in 2019.
22% of jobs will be done fully remote, 3x what it was before the pandemic.
Only 23% of jobs will be done exclusively in-person at a worksite, down from 60% in 2019.
This shift is one of the biggest trends in the future of work we’ve seen in decades and it touches nearly everyone.
Remote work applications have nearly doubled in 2022 alone. Women with young children are a great example of how that works in the real world. The Great Resignation is fueled by a Remote Work boom, that could signal the changing nature of work itself.
In July 2022, remote work listings on LinkedIn (17% of total paid job listings on the platform) drew a majority of applications (54%) and nearly half of the views (47%) compared to on-site jobs. This also complicates competition and application for jobs that aren’t tied to a zip code.
Technology Jobs have gone Full-On Remote
The industries that had the highest percentage of remote job listings on LinkedIn in July were, unsurprisingly, ones that don’t necessarily require physical interaction:
Technology, information and media: 42%
Professional services: 30%
Education: 25%
Administrative and support services: 25%
Old school managers who need to see their workers in order to trust them simply for the most part are a dying breed unless you work in Finance and banking and other sectors where it makes less sense to be remote.
Business leaders are facing “enormous pressure to cave to workers’ demands,” and in response are getting creative with other incentives that improve the work experience.
Job openings fell by 1 million in August, a sign that the labor market could be cooling as rising interest rates slow demand for goods, services and labor. Yet the unemployment rate actually went down still near historically low levels.
Remote work is here to stay.
Software Engineers are Leaders in the Remote Work Boom
According to the statistics in The State of Remote Engineering study, 86 percent of engineers work entirely in remote software engineer jobs. This is in sharp contrast to pre-pandemic figures, which indicated that 19 percent of people worked remotely 100 percent of the time.
86% of Software engineers now compared to 19% then work entirely remote 100% of the time.
Software, data and machine learning engineers are thus truly pioneers of the future trend.
Teams are exploring innovative methods to sustain culture and combat burnout and give competitive compensation. While remote work has overall benefits, there are definitely mental health risks and company culture degradation issues that can sometimes lead to faster and higher rates of employee churn.
One wonders if living in another country could help combat burnout rates when signs of burnout begin to emerge.
More Americans are trying out South American countries and Mexico in recent months and years.
While job cuts have gotten a lot of headlines the reality in Tech even in the Autumn of 2022, is that jobs are in a great reshuffle where remote work is just an expected perk. The apparent willingness to leave a job suggests tech sector workers aren't too concerned by recent layoffs at US tech firms. According to Crunchbase's lay-off tracker, as of August 9, US tech firms had laid off 41,000 workers since the beginning of 2022.
You can track tech startup layoffs here.
Quit quitting and job hopping may be near an all-time high in 2022. Some 1 in 4 workers are so confident that they’d quit their job without a new one lined up, and about 1 in 3 job seekers expect wage growth to keep accelerating.
Thanks for reading!
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