f you are a tech pro in search of the highest paying market in North America, you may think San Francisco, New York, or Boston are your best choices. But the truth is that in today’s market, you don’t need to look any farther than the four walls of your own home.
A new report from Ladders shows that for the first time the city with the most high-paying jobs available is not one of these three tech hub cities. It’s not even a city at all. Rather, it’s remote work.
“It’s a confirmation that we are living in extraordinary new times,” said Ladders CEO Mark Cenedella in an interview with InformationWeek. Ladders analyzes data from 50,000 North American employers on a weekly basis to create this analysis of the job market for jobs that pay $100,000 and up. Before the pandemic, remote work made up just a small percentage of the highest-paying jobs. Now it makes up 80,360 of those jobs, according to Ladders, well ahead of the next largest city of San Francisco at 68,777 jobs.
“If remote were a city, it would be the largest city and growing,” Cenedella said. “Even with the decline of COVID, we are seeing remote job postings continue to increase.”
Research from Omdia on the Future of Work indicates the necessity of relocating from central offices to remote working will result in a permanent change and more open attitudes toward supporting alternative workstyles, Omdia analyst Tim Banting told InformationWeek.
In this era of remote, there are more changes afoot. For instance, Cenedella said that corporate leaders are talking about the savings they’ll realize by reducing their real estate footprints. As businesses reduce their presence in large cities, there’s a potential to reverse the megatrend of urbanization that predicted more people would move to cities. Instead, more people could be moving to small towns across North America, Cenedella said.
Another potential change is in how employees are paid. Cenedella said that many employers intend to pay differentially according to where the remote employee is located. If you live and work in San Francisco, you will earn a premium. If you live in a small town in Arkansas, you will earn less.
