The state of flexible work, by the numbers
Are you seeing remote and hybrid job opportunities dwindle? It’s starting to get a little bit harder, depending on the industry and how much money you want to make in these roles.
In the four years since the pandemic, which prompted the rise of remote and hybrid work, there has been a tug-of-war between employees and employers about what (and more specifically – where) the best way to work is: from home, the office, or a mix of both.
Experts frequently say that the pendulum is swinging back to the side where more people are returning to the office. But is that the case across the board?
We spoke to three experts to get a pulse on the current landscape of flexible jobs.
Only 2% of all high-paying jobs are now hybrid
That figure is from the latest research by Ladders, a career site for jobs that pay $100,000 or more, which analyzed half a million job postings on its site from January through March. The company also found that fewer than 10% of high-paying jobs are fully remote. The percentage of jobs available remotely fell 33% between October and December 2023 and January and March of 2024. That means just about 9% of all high-paying jobs available are fully remote.
“What stands out to me is that hybrid jobs are still dropping a lot,” said John Mullinix, director of growth marketing at Ladders. “I think hybrid jobs might come near to a fizzle out in the near future [for that salary threshold.] Companies that were hybrid were hybrid not because they wanted to [be], but out of necessity. Hybrid jobs will probably drop to less than 0.5% in the future. Remote jobs might flatten at some point.”
Job seekers are 40% less likely to find a high-paying hybrid job opportunity in 2024 with 89% of all high-paying jobs now fully in-person. That means that job seekers looking for high-paying hybrid and remote jobs will face more competition than ever as those opportunities remain in freefall.
“The search trends are always high for remote jobs,” said Mullinix. “If they can’t find a remote job, then they settle for in-person or hybrid. The problem is remote jobs are decreasing in share. If you want to make $200,000 plus, there are even less remote jobs. Everyone wants remote jobs, but there isn’t enough to go around. It’s making those jobs incredibly competitive.”
Flexible job ads are up by 62%
While high-paying hybrid jobs might not be on the rise, there are still plenty of flexible work opportunities. This data point is from Flexa, which analyzed over 4,000 job ads and 840,000 job searches. Despite a tight labor market driving RTO more widely, job seekers aren’t willing to give up remote work. Half of all workers were searching for fully remote roles over the last quarter on average.
“When flexible working first became a big deal, people had these really long wish lists, a little bit like in dating when people are like ‘this is my ideal man, they need to have these 55 qualities, otherwise I’m not interested,’” said Beth Carter, Flexa’s head of growth. “People wanted all sorts of quite specific, niche things. What’s been interesting in the last few months, as the job market has become more difficult, they are abandoning some of these nice-to-haves. We’ve seen a real reduction in the demand for work-from-anywhere schemes.”
She said that people are getting back to the basics for what they want in a job, and any level of flexibility, even if it’s not remote-first, goes a long way.
Amidst shrinking wages and job vacancies, and rising unemployment rates, many employers are pulling back on flexible work. Dell, Boots and IBM are among the companies recently moving to penalize or restrict remote work.
Flexa’s research also found that despite wider RTO mandates, remote-first roles, where office attendance is optional, account for a significant portion (31%) of jobs being advertised currently. Carter said that “the tip of the iceberg is not necessarily reflective of what’s actually going on in the whole industry.”
Over the last quarter, half of workers were searching for “fully remote” roles
Despite whisperings of it being harder to land a fully remote job today, job seekers are still hungry for it. Flexa’s research found that fully remote job searches rose by 11% between January and March this year.
“What we’re seeing is that you have these big headlines on big name companies that everybody recognizes, but there are actually hundreds of thousands of really progressive companies, who just might not be household names, who are very flexible and have a lot of different offerings,” said Carter.
Gen Z is the cohort that wants to work from home the least
Gen Z is often painted as the generation that wants to work from home all the time and cares about flexibility over anything else. However, the latest Workforce Monitor survey, commissioned by the American Staffing Association and conducted online by The Harris Poll, found that only a quarter (26%) of Gen Z want to fully work from home.
And it’s a misconception that all Baby Boomers want to be in the office. A large chunk (37%) prefer fully remote setups. Millennials and Gen X fall somewhere in the middle at 31% and 33%, respectively.
“One might expect that Generation Z would be rooting for fully remote work, but we didn’t find that that was the case,” said Richard Wahlquist, CEO of the American Staffing Association. “We found that the younger generation felt that they were probably going to be hindered in their careers by working remotely. Older workers have probably had the opportunity over their careers to have mentors, have been mentors, understood workplace best practices, and are probably at a stage in their life where they’re not really thinking about too many more steps in the corporate ladder.”
The survey found that 39% of Americans said that hybrid was their ideal work schedule. That number was even higher for those with children under 18 years old in their household, with 46% saying they prefer hybrid.
43% of U.S. workers say they are burnt out, with 47% hesitant to discuss burnout with their boss
So closely tied to whether or not you have a flexible schedule is how much you are feeling burnt out at work. The Workforce Monitor survey, conducted in January and released last week, found that of the 2,094 adults asked, more than four in 10 are suffering from burnout. According to related data from Gallup, 17% of workers are actively disengaged due to burnout.
“These people are complaining a lot to their friends, family members, colleagues and sometimes supervisors,” said Wahlquist. “They’re just not engaged at all. There’s very little opportunity to move that group into the group that is not engaged, but they put their time in.”
Beyond this, though, is the challenge of responding to burnout among remote employees, where it might be harder to connect with them through a screen.
“If you have burnt out and stressed remote workers and you don’t really have a chance to bring them in, you can’t have them come into your office and talk about that stress and see what you can do to help,” said Wahlquist.