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One chart shows the explosion in high-paying work-from-home jobs during the pandemic

Andy Kiersz   

One chart shows the explosion in high-paying work-from-home jobs during the pandemic
Policy2 min read
  • Careers site Ladders found a 1,000% increase in high-paying job listings that allow remote work.
  • The share of high-paying jobs that can be worked from home in the marketing, media, and design sector especially shot up.
  • Over a quarter of high-end sales and business development jobs offer remote work.

Millions of Americans have been working remotely since the beginning of the pandemic, and the number of jobs that can be done from home is only growing.

High-end careers site Ladders recently analyzed internal job listing data for positions paying over $100,000, and found an explosion in jobs that allow remote work over the last year. In a press release announcing the results of that analysis, it noted that the number of high-paying remote work listings on the site increased from about 7,000 in March 2020 to more than 80,000 in July 2021.

Ladders broke down the results by sector. In March 2020, less than 2% of high-paying media, marketing, and design jobs offered remote work, and that share skyrocketed to 18% in July 2021. Over a quarter of jobs in the sales and business development sector now can be worked remotely, up from about 8% before the pandemic.

High-paying jobs in some other sectors are less likely to offer remote options. Less than 5% of positions in health care and in construction and engineering offered work from home in July, according to Ladders' data.

The pandemic has ended the daily commute for many workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' recently released American Time Use Survey found that average time spent traveling by Americans dropped from about an hour and 12 minutes a day in 2019 to just 47 minutes in 2020, and the share of people working from home almost doubled from 22% to 42%.

Working from home has become a very desirable job attribute for many workers. A survey on work attitudes run by Stanford, the University of Chicago, and ITAM shows that about a third of workers who are currently working remotely want to continue doing so full-time after the pandemic, and another 46% want to work away from the office part-time.

Several big companies like Twitter, Amazon, and Salesforce have offered various remote work and hybrid-work options as they begin contemplating a return to the office. Many other employers could follow suit if scarce workers in a red-hot labor market demand flexible arrangements.

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