Jobs
Where Are All The Remote Jobs Going In 2024?
We know that fully remote work is no longer as popular amongst employers as it used to be during and shortly after the pandemic.
But is hybrid work disappearing, too?
The once glamorous idea of working in a tech firm is swiftly turning into a nightmare. Ironically, big tech firms are among the most outspoken about their policies to not only reduce remote work within their workforce but also eliminate it altogether.
For example, as of Monday, Dell Technologies followed employers such as Amazon with mandating in-office attendance five days a week. This came shortly after Amazon announced its decision to cut remote and hybrid working with full-time in office work effective January 1, 2025.
Although currently, the restriction on remote working extends only to sales department members, existing Dell sales employees must only be permitted to work from home where they are not within reasonable commuting distance to a Dell office location, according to a memo seen and reported by Reuters. (Previously, sales team members worked on a hybrid schedule, being in the office or holding in-person client meetings for three days a week.)
This disturbing turn of events prompts the question, will hybrid jobs begin to decline in volume?
Thankfully, the big-name employers mandating five days a week in the office are the exception to the main rule. Most employers recognize that steering away from entirely onsite work is their best option if they wish to attract and retain talent (one of their biggest talent management pain points). Hybrid is the perfect way to bridge the gap between employee expectations and demands for flexibility, as well as employer and company culture needs.
When analyzing the percentage of new job postings by work location, a recent Robert Half report revealed that hybrid jobs were always more popular as an option than fully remote jobs, although onsite work always took precedence.
For marketing and creative roles, 27% of job listings were hybrid, contrasted to just 15% (nearly half of that number), which were fully remote jobs.
In tech, we see the same pattern—26% of job postings were hybrid as opposed to the 17% that were 100% remote. The finance and accounting industry and the legal industry have a similar share of hybrid jobs (27% and 26%, respectively). However, the availability of remote jobs in these industries is much more limited, with only 11% in finance and a scattering 9% in legal.
An estimated 23% of human resources jobs are hybrid remote, as opposed to the 11% which allow complete work-from-home, and within admin and customer support, which has the largest share of in-person job listings—more than three-quarters—approximately 14% of listings are hybrid and 10% are fully remote.
Additionally, what is interesting is that although over a third of workers would rather work hybrid remotely, and two-thirds would prefer fully remote work, there is a mismatch between remote job supply and demand. More than half of Americans who are remote workers currently operate on a hybrid remote work schedule, according to data extracted from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics August 2024 report on remote workers.
However, the positive side to this for those seeking flexible work is that although there is a greater share of onsite job postings than hybrid or remote, this state of things will soon be a relic of the past. The number of fully onsite job listings has continued to decline throughout 2024.
“With employers seeing high retention value in offering flexible work options, fully onsite job postings have dropped by 10 percentage points since Q2 2023 — as hybrid and remote options have increased,” Robert Half said in their report.