Remote jobs in the US are becoming accessible to more people, with a growing number of postings not requiring a college degree

• 4% of US job postings in May were for remote roles not requiring a college education.
• According to LinkedIn data, customer service and admin roles are going remote.
• The uptick reflects greater desire for working remotely globally.

The number of remote roles that don't require a college education has increased.

In May just under 4% of all US job postings were for remote roles that don't require a college education. This figure is up from 0.6% of all roles for the same period last year, according to LinkedIn data.

Some of the roles that have proven most popular among applicants include customer service representative, salesperson as well as administrative and data entry roles.

The trend reflects a general rise in the availability of remote roles since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Adverts for roles requiring a college degree also rose in the US, from 2% last year to 7% in May, according to the findings.

On a global scale, the share of remote jobs posts grew 2.4 times between May 2020 to May 2021, Mariano Mamertino, EMEA economist at LinkedIn told Insider.

Ads labelled as remote or that include keywords such as "work from home" now represent 14% of all job posts.

"This comes as companies rethink how they operate in the future and increasingly look to offer employees greater flexibility which many crave after the past year and a half of working remotely," said Mamertino.

More people want to work from home

The rise of services like Zoom and Slack has allowed people to easily adapt to working remotely.

There has also been a growing acceptance among employers that people are able to work remotely, and that many want more flexibility from their job roles.

A Microsoft survey from March found that 73% of employees wanted flexible remote options following their pandemic experience. Some 40% said they were considering changing roles, and 46% of those said they were planning to move now that remote work was a possibility - admittedly many of these respondents hold a college degree.

Some industries in the US - including hospitality and ride-hailing apps - have been struggling to fill vacancies for months, a situation the US Chamber of Commerce labelled as a "national economic emergency" in a June report.

According to latest figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 3.6 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in May, a trend fueled by a mixture of stronger out-of-work benefits and the fact that people are reassessing their careers or retiring after the pandemic.

While it's possible that some remote jobs will revert back to in-person roles, Mamertino says that for many the shift to remote will be permanent.

"With companies across every industry considering their future workplace policies, the changes implemented will impact workers at all levels, giving more people greater flexibility than they have ever had before."