The same percentage of employed people who worked remotely in 2023 is the same as the previous year, a survey found
Don’t call it work from home any more, just call it work. According to new data, what once seemed like a pandemic necessity has become the new norm for many Americans.
Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the results of its American time use survey, which asks Americans how much time they spend doing various activities, from work to leisure.
The most recent survey results, released at the end of June, show that the same percentage of employed people who did at least some remote work in 2023 is the same percentage as those who did remote work in 2022.
In other words, it’s the first stabilization in the data since before the pandemic, when only a small percentage of workers did remote work, and a sign that remote work is here to stay.
Good for the people who want it. I just can’t imagine wanting my work so close to my personal space.
Optionality is key, that’s what I’m worried about losing in the next market downturn. Letting people work from home is great.
Forcing people to work from home to save on office real estate costs, preferences older and wealthier workers who don’t need to build work relationships and can afford a home with an office.
In my experience, job hunting early in your career is a pure fishing expedition. You’ve got to constantly be out there looking, you take even the small jobs (I started doing software at a tiny health care IT company for $17/hr while friends were making $30/hr at better firms), and try to change jobs every three years until you find your ceiling.
The early shitty jobs give you an opportunity to network and make you more attractive to recruiters. They also tend to be much more friendly to “work from home” because they hate maintaining an office as much as you hate driving to one.
The bigger corporate positions will have departments you can move between if you don’t like where you currently are but don’t want to leave the firm. But then you have to start making trade off between pay/position and work from home.
When I was starting out I had to create a fake company website with fake emails to use as references. Finally found a company that bit (off of Craigslist). I think the guy who was hiring knew, but was impressed with the effort.
But once I got my foot in the door things got much easier. Doesn’t take me very long to find work now days.
“We want to work from home.”
Okay cool, so we might as well hire people from india then.
Yeah because language barriers, cultural differences, and time zones don’t matter
Pretty much! I manage a SaaS product for our company and the company that makes our product has basically offshored their entire support team. Tier 1 and 2 support went to India, and the customer service reps that we collab with weekly went to Colombia.
Development is still done in my home country, but barely, and I’m sure its just a matter of time until that leaves here also.
Corporations single only motive is to produce more and more profit.
I disagree completely. I think people can do some work remotely but cannot be remote all the time unfortunately. Else nobody in the company would know them and so interaction would decrease substantially over time after an initial introduction. So unless they do payroll or something where they need minimal interaction, they can’t stay at home. My neighbor works from home all the time so I’ll keep an eye out for when and if he transitions back. However, I’m loving the minimal traffic accidents and reduced traffic. So please please keep demanding work from home! Even I want to work from home every now and then.
Virtual meetings, stands, and even just check ins or “coffee talk” sessions happen all the time and we’re 100% remote. Not to mention general chats via Slack or Teams with people posting memes or talking about different subjects (movies, games, etc).
Everywhere I’ve worked since college has had people working in multiple locations, so interaction via chat and voice/video call were common pre-covid anyways. The shift to remote really didn’t have any measurable impact on social stuffs aside from going out to lunch with co-workers, which still happens now, we just schedule it ahead of time.
Who the hell cares about interaction though. Why do I NEED to go into the office to see Dave from a department that I never need to interact with? As long as I can fulfill my job duties remotely, that’s all that matters. Otherwise interacting over emails / chat or audio meetings is plenty.
Bullshit. I work remote 100%, and we have very good cooperation within my company and with customers. If I want to see my coworkers I simply switch to a videocall :D
At my work, where we don’t make money by just chatting, we need to be there to move the things that screw together into actual products. It’s very hard to remote that. Also for me as a research engineer, it’s very hard to figure out what when wrong with a test if I am not there to set it up and to observe it. Like I said, please keep demanding remote work though. I want to be remote when I can.
You’d be surprised, but there are so many professions in modern world that are fully digital. It’s bizarre to judge everyone based on your very little personal experience. Tune down your arrogance, these people also do actual work and produce actual products, even though they don’t screw anything together.
It is? Then why can’t I find a single work from home job that isn’t a fake listing?
Try reading the article? They are pointing out that the percentage of people who did at least some work from home did not decrease between 2022 and 2023. This is not even full WFH. So what we see now is probably what it’s going to look like going forward.
I hate to be a dick, but if you’re struggling to find a job, and this is at all representative of your ability to do basic research, you have a glaring weakness that you can work on.
Found one real job this year without any problems. Maybe look worldwide? You’re not any longer bound to your city or your county when looking for 100% remote.
I had to shift this attitude myself when I started looking around this year. Was used to only look for jobs nearby to reduce commute… Bullshit. Opened up for worldwide (English is business language nearly everywhere) and now happily work remote 100%.
I wish you much success!
Good idea. Thanks for the tip.
BTW, which recruiting platform do you use? I’ve had zero luck on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Craigslist.
If you’re looking for just WFH jobs, check out FlexJobs. There’s a membership fee, but because it’s oriented towards remote work and because the end users pay part of the cost, it filters out a lot of the bullshit jobs.
Every job I have ever had off LinkedIn has been because somebody contacted me, I just sort of maintain the LinkedIn site just in case somebody decides they want to head hunt me but I don’t really consider it anything other than a passive collector of information. Certainly wouldn’t use it as my primary jump hunting site.
Also Craigslist? Unless you’re looking to be an organ donor I don’t think you’re going to have much look there
You’re not any longer bound to your city or your county
And neither are people in every other country, including low wage countries…
That’s always been the case though. He’s have always outsourced to other countries but they can’t do it completely because the quality of the work just isn’t there. Because they’re not trained.
