Job Vacancies Offering Remote Work Are Shrinking

Job seekers hoping for a remote or hybrid work schedule should try to get hired soon, because the work-from-home winds are shifting. The share of U.S. jobs offering the option to work remotely at least one day has declined to 12.19% in April, from 13.08% in October, researchers discovered.

While remote work exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of job postings saying employees can work from home one or more days a week is not increasing at the same pace as before, the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., reported.
Employers nationwide are trying to coax workers back to the office, with some, such as Amazon, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Twitter, and Tesla, telling everyone to come back. In San Francisco, the share of jobs postings offering remote work dropped to 27% in April, from 31.9% in October.
In Boston, the share of job openings mentioning remote work options fell to 21.4% in April, from 25.38% in November. In Wichita, Kansas, the percentage fell to 6% in April, from 15.6% in September. In Phoenix, it slipped to 15.3% in April, from 20.95% last October.
Remote-work vacancies can vary widely even within industries. Among selected U.S. aerospace firms, both Boeing and Lockheed Martin allow hybrid or fully-remote work in more than 50% of their management job postings, while Northrop Grumman allows less than 25%, and SpaceX allows almost none.

What’s Next: U.S. survey data suggests that going forward, workers will spend one quarter of their work days working remotely, five times the prepandemic rate, the report said. Professional, scientific, and computer-related occupations are more likely than others to offer hybrid or fully remote work, compared with 2019.