Remote job postings grow for some roles while others shrink amid RTO push
Demand for remote roles may be starting to outstrip supply.
Interest in remote roles among job seekers has not fallen and is stabilizing near an all-time high — but the share of job postings advertising WFH roles has fallen over the past year, according to data from the hiring platform Indeed.
Job postings offering remote and/or hybrid arrangements hit a peak and accounted for 10.3% of Indeed’s postings in February 2022, though that’s since fallen to about 8.4% as of May.
The remote job demand versus remote job ads available ratio mirrors the ongoing disparity between employers that want people back in the office more, and its accompanying pushback from employees.
While remote and hybrid postings are shrinking for certain roles, other professions are actually seeing even more opportunities to work remotely. For example, the share of job postings for HR and marketing roles have dropped the most across all occupations over the past year, followed by media and management roles, according to a new report from Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
Jobs that already had a low or medium-sized share of remote postings dropped a further 10% since last June, while those with relatively high shares of remote and hybrid roles saw postings fall about 36% from a year ago, the report also found.
“Employers may be feeling less pressure to offer remote work in some of these categories as related job postings have fallen substantially over the past year for many of these corporate-related roles,” the report said. High wage jobs that can be done remotely are still being done remotely, or even at a higher rate, per the report’s analysis.
According to data from hiring platform ZipRecuriter, employers that have customer service businesses have cut the number of job postings for remote roles, while shares shares have risen the most for roles like attorneys and consultants, Jill Pollak, Ziprecruiter’s chief economist said.
Indeed’s report found engineering and social science roles saw shares of remote postings grow the most over the past year, while legal roles grew as well.
More traditionally remote-friendly roles in tech specifically, like software development and IT, have also seen shares of postings for WFH roles grow.
That’s interesting to see amid layoffs in the tech industry, said Indeed economist Cory Stahle. “Software development, which has kind of been looked at as one of biggest remote postings or occupational groups, has stayed pretty heavily remote despite some of the pull backs and some of the things we’ve heard with layoffs,” Stahle said.
About 43% of software developer roles on Indeed were for remote or hybrid jobs this June, compared to about 41% last June, the report found.
At the same, while many employers are calling workers back to in-person work, overall they are still posting more remote jobs than pre-pandemic.
“Even though we’re hearing a lot of employers say that they want to get workers back to the office, they’re still posting remote jobs,” Stahle said. “It’s still very elevated compared to what it was before the pandemic.”
A variety of factors are driving the changes in remote postings, namely that many companies are still in the middle of their return-to-office transitions, toiling with challenges like which days and exactly who needs to return.
“Companies still seem very unsure about the way forward on remote work,” Pollak said. “It’s something still being debated within C-suites, you’re still seeing a lot of companies move one way and then reverse course,” she said.