Employers catch on: remote job posts rise 357% as tech, media lead the way

Of all the habits that Americans picked up during the chaotic conditions of 2020, which ones are truly here to stay? We may say goodbye to those shelves full of hand sanitizer, but the rise of remote works looks like a game-changer -- in a huge way.?

As of May 20, the percentage of paid job postings on LinkedIn offering “remote work” has skyrocketed 357% beyond the year-earlier share, according to LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team. ?(Corrected August 6, 2021; the change was initially reported, incorrectly, as a 457% rise.)

This analysis covers about two million remote job listings in the past year, ranging from children’s book editors to anti-money-laundering experts.

“We’ve been able to open up a wider pool of talent,” explains Andrea Hoffman , director of delivery at Hum , a 13-person software company that’s based, well, everywhere. Its founders are in Charlottesville, Va. Hoffman works remotely from her home in the Milwaukee suburbs. Software engineers are in Ukraine. And the company’s head of business development is in New York.

Hum took shape last year as an all-remote startup, so it could gain momentum even in the face of pandemic-related restrictions. Now both bosses and employees wouldn’t have it any other way. Digital tools keep everyone connected and up-to-speed, Hoffman says. Meanwhile, being able to offer remote jobs makes it easier to hire star candidates, including working parents whose routines often don't mesh well with a classic office setting.??

The chart below highlights eight industries where remote work is making striking inroads. Leading the way are media and communications, where remote work now accounts for 26.8% of all paid job listings. Also near the top are software and information technology jobs. Overall, 9.7% of listings across all industries now involve remote work, up from barely 2% a year earlier.

Not every industry is embracing remote work quite so boldly. LinkedIn data shows that remote opportunities still constitute less than 5% of all job posts in fields such as consumer goods, manufacturing, design, transportation and logistics. For travel and recreation, remote listings fall below 2% of the mix.?

But even in health care, where in-person care is the very essence of many jobs, remote work is making surprising inroads. Current examples include a wide range of support functions that don’t have to be done onsite -- such as utilization review, project management, staff attorneys and blog editors.

In many aspects of tech, the new work-from-home norms have caught on so quickly that they’ve become practically the default way of doing things. During the pandemic, for example, Richelle Minor joined Amazon as a project manager for the company’s voice-enabled Alexa devices, working out of her Naperville, Ill., home.?

Minor works nearly 2,000 miles from Alexa’s top leadership in Seattle. But the nature of her work -- connecting with Alexa’s far-flung developer community -- defies old-style thinking about needing to be in any particular geography. With abundant video chats each week, she says, “I feel comfortable in this role.”?

As executive coach Vanessa Shaw observes, we may have reached the point that candidates' attitudes toward future jobs will be deeply shaped by the ability (or inability) to work remotely at least part of the time. “People want to work where they feel most comfortable,” she observes.

Already, the magic word “remote” has a catnip-like appeal to job hunters. Even though remote positions represent only 9.7% of U.S. paid job listings on LinkedIn, in mid-May of this year they attracted 20.5% of job views -- and 24.4% of job applications.

Andrea Hoffman, the Hum executive helping to build an all-remote software company, saw the power of “remote” recently, when she posted an opening for a business analyst. From her pre-pandemic experience hiring for similar positions at other companies, she says, she would have been surprised to get even 100 applications.

This time, she got 500.

The good news for Hoffman, is that she landed Kari Alexander , a savvy analyst living near Cincinnati, with eight years of highly relevant experience. (Alexander says the chance to work at home and be done with a nearly hour-long commute added to the allure of this new job.)

But trying to sort through 500 candidates can be exhausting, Hoffman concedes. So, she advises anyone else who posts remote-eligible jobs to pinpoint the candidate requirements and job description as much as possible. The key lesson: when hiring remote, there’s plenty of room to be picky without running the risk of not getting enough candidates.

Methodology

LinkedIn analyzed 2 million paid remote job postings in the United States posted from May 1 2020 to May 20, 2021. A “remote job” is defined as one where either the job poster explicitly labeled it as “remote” or if the job contained keywords like “work from home” in the listing.

LinkedIn data scientists Carl Shan and Brian Xu contributed to this article.