Remote work became a necessity during COVID lockdowns and has remained popular although some employers have tried a variety of methods, including hybrid work mandates and threats of outsourcing, to bring workers back into offices.
In the last few weeks, Meta stopped offering remote work in newly posted job openings, reports emerged of pay cuts for remote employees, and at least one CEO outsourced a job to save money after an employee asked to go remote. Wall Street's largest bank, JPMorgan, also told managing directors to be in the office five days a week.
For those who still work remotely — about 12% of US workers according to a recent report from WFH research — personal finance website WalletHub recently released a ranking of the best states for remote workers in 2023.
It divided a set of a dozen metrics into two categories with differing point values: work environment and living environment. Work environment includes factors like what percent of residents already do, or possibly could, work from home, cybersecurity, and the rate of homes in the state that have internet access.
Living environment encompasses a wider range of factors, including the average cost of electricity and internet access, as well as the average home size and the likelihood that the home may be overcrowded, and not conducive to productivity. Living and work environment scores were used to create an overall composite score per state.
Sparsely populated states that may not have widely accessible internet access or have few people working remotely like Alaska, North Dakota, and Montana rounded out the bottom of the list. Several of the most populated states did not make the top 10, including California, Texas, Florida, and New York — but they were in the top 25.
Source: WalletHubHere are WalletHub's top 10 states to live in as a remote worker: