Remote Work Is Here To Stay And Will Increase Into 2023, Experts Say

While some companies continue to thumb their noses at The Great Resignation and insist that employees come back into the office, data scientists at?Ladders?insist that the writing is on the wall. Remote work is here to stay. According to their projections, 25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022, and remote opportunities will continue to increase through 2023. Researchers from?Ladders?have been carefully tracking remote work availability from North America’s largest 50,000 employers since the pandemic began.

Remote opportunities leapt from under 4% of all high paying jobs before the pandemic to about 9% at the end of 2020, and to?more than 15% today. “This change in working arrangements is impossible to overhype. As big as it is, it’s even bigger than people think,” said Ladders CEO?Marc Cenedella, who says it’s the largest societal change in America since the end of World War II. “Hiring practices typically move at a glacial pace, but the pandemic turned up the heat so we’re seeing a rapid flood of change in this space. It’s really rather amazing.”

Remote Work Is A Permanent Fixture

According to the 2021 State of Remote Work Report from?Owl Labs, 2021 was the year the world stayed remote, and 90% of the 2,050 full-time remote workers surveyed said they were as productive or more productive working remotely, compared to when they toiled in the office. Another 74% said after the pandemic, working from home is better for their mental health, and 84% reported that working remotely after the pandemic would make them happier, with many even willing to take a pay cut.

A January 2022 survey of 1,000 full-time workers from?Ergotron?corroborates the Owl Labs study, revealing that as workers have become more acclimated to hybrid and remote office environments since the onset of the pandemic, they are experiencing benefits to their physical and mental well-being. Taken together these two findings indicate that American businesses listen up and look beyond today to build more progressive workplace policies that will help employees thrive. The report concluded that leaders must rethink their workplace culture to be more inclusive of remote and hybrid work—this is the new normal.