The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a massive social experiment for working from home. For many workers, remote work wasn't a blip of the pandemic but a work structure that lingered long after, especially for white-collar workers. Nationwide, the number of people working remotely jumped from just 5% in 2018 to 13.5% in 2023, according to Census Bureau data.
Those who have stopped coming to the office usually cite money and time savings as benefits. Some employees value not having to pay for gas, parking, or the transit fare for their ride to the office. Others jump at the chance to cut down on a long commute, spend less time getting ready in the morning and packing their lunch, or have a more flexible schedule throughout the day.
Unanchoring themselves from the office suite has let some employees move further into the suburbs or other cities for cheaper housing. A 2017 study published in the journal American Economic Review found that employees value the ability to work at home the same as an 8% raise on average, making it a perk that's hard for employees to give up.
Even so, many employers are calling workers back to the office. Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Dell, Sweetgreen, Tesla, The Washington Post, and X announced that all employees would be required to return to the office for a strict five days a week in the coming year or face consequences. Other companies announced structured hybrid schedules to meet workers in the middle with partial, in-person weeks. Even the video conference app Zoom announced an ultimatum for employees to return despite its video conferencing technology enabling so many to work from home in the first place.
Behind these return-to-office mandates is a belief that in-person collaboration improves productivity and fosters better workplace culture—something they say is difficult to accomplish when the office is empty. With the labor market cooling, employees have less leverage to find a new job this year if their boss pulls them back to the office.
To better understand which cities have more employees working from home, Spokeo analyzed Census data to see which metro areas have the highest share of remote workers.
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COVID 'Zoom towns' continue to attract remote workers
Remote work, most common among tech and office workers, has remained popular since the pandemic. For many cities, being a tech hub and a remote worker hub go hand in hand. High education levels are also a significant factor in all the metro areas at the top of the remote work charts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top remote work industries include computer systems design, data processing, software development, and publishing.
Remote work led to a rise in cross-metro work, where employees can work in a different metro area from their manager. As The Washington Post reported, employees are 36% more likely to report to a manager who lives elsewhere and often in a city that hosts other managers, according to a 2024 ADP Research Institute analysis.
Now able to work from anywhere, remote workers often choose to move to the suburbs or less expensive cities entirely. Meanwhile, their managers opt to stay closer to company headquarters to further their in-person relationships with the higher-ups and other actors in the sector, like research institutes, clients, regulators, and competitors. Their proximity to key decision-makers is worth the price, even if their direct reports move away from them.
For a manager looking to climb high on the promotion ladder, not being present in the right circles will cost them, and videoconferencing doesn't further that kind of networking. As work-from-home arrangements become more popular, this phenomenon is sorting remote workers into pricier cities that disproportionately host managers—think San Francisco, Boston, and Washington D.C.—and more affordable areas that host rank-and-file employees, who don't need to live near influential decision-makers to do their jobs.
On the flip side, cities that offered less expensive housing and lower taxes absorbed remote workers from more expensive cities during the pandemic. Austin, Texas, saw a net migration of 28,000 remote workers in 2020 and 2021, with many seeking cheaper homes when they could work from anywhere, according to a New York Times analysis of American Community Survey data. Raleigh, North Carolina, is also seeing remote work migration, but new workers are flocking to the Research Triangle to work in technology and advanced manufacturing.
Boulder, Colorado, topped the list of metro areas with the highest share of remote workers, at nearly 28%, compared to the national average of 13.5%. Boulder and nearby Denver are becoming hotspots for tech startups, many of which started as remote-first to lower costs and recruit widely. The region is also becoming a budding ecosystem for quantum technology fueled by the University of Colorado.
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The future of remote work
Despite its popularity, the future of remote work is still up in the air.
With lockdowns long behind us, more employers are calling their workers back to the office, and most operate on a hybrid basis. The most commonly cited priority is in-person collaboration and teamwork. Still, others hope to develop company culture through the watercooler conversations and spontaneous interactions that mostly happen at the office.
Still, return-to-office mandates have created friction between management and remote workers, causing many companies to postpone their final return dates. Once in place, enforcing them is another story; only 17% of organizations actively do so, according to a 2024 CBRE survey. Solving the mismatch between what employers and employees want from remote work is likely next for many businesses.
Some companies are experimenting with what penalties or perks would motivate workers to return. On the harsher end, some employers have proposed negative performance reviews, stalling promotions, or even termination. Others have considered reconfiguring their office spaces to create spaces for deep focus and social interactions.
Instead of fully returning to the office, many workplaces have opted for hybrid schedules requiring two or three days in the office and scheduling meetings or social events to give employees a specific purpose for coming in. As companies navigate new technologies and work dynamics, workers will also face questions about how they want to work and where.
Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Clarese Moller.
This story originally appeared on Spokeo and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
