Remote employees are more likely to be laid off than in-office peers — but they quit more, too

• Remote workers are 35% more likely to be fired than their peers, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Analysts told the outlet it's easier to fire someone with whom you don't have a personal connection.

It has been a nightmare beginning to the year with mass layoffs throttling the tech, retail, finance, and media industries, and a new analysis of two million white-collar jobs reveals one trait that makes employees more at risk of being laid off: working from home.

The analysis, conducted by employment data provider Live Data Technologies, found fully remote employees are laid off 35% more often than their peers who work in-office or hybrid roles, The Wall Street Journal reported. The study showed that 10% of full-time remote roles were cut in 2023, compared to 7% of in-office jobs.

While research from the University of Pittsburgh shows that in-office work mandates do not improve company value or employee performance, analysts say the reason remote employees are more likely to be fired is more straightforward than measuring the value they add to the company.

"When a hiring manager gets news they have to cut 10% of the staff, it's easier to put someone on the list you don't have a close personal relationship with," Andy Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, told The Journal.

Though more likely to be laid off, remote employees — who see flexible work as equivalent to an 8% raise — are also more likely to quit.

The analysis cited by The Journal found that 12% of remote workers quit their jobs in 2023 and began a new role within two months, compared to 9% of hybrid and in-office employees.

Strict RTO policies may be partially to blame for the talent turnover. A former Amazon software development manager chose to quit his six-figure job after the company asked him to move cross-country to return to the office, part of an uptick in workers from the tech giant leaving over the strict RTO mandate, layoffs, and "lack of respect" at the company.

Other tech workers are "loud quitting" — or pushing back on management while collecting a paycheck and looking for a new gig — in protest of in-office mandates.

"The people who are in any type of manager or leadership role, if they have to see people, if they have to see butts in seats to think people are working, they don't know how people work," Danielle, a millennial digital marketing manager who quit her job over a push to return-to-office previously told BI.