35 Million and Counting: America’s Growing Remote and Hybrid Workforce

As we’re three months into 2024, the remote work debate rumbles on. In some companies, remote employees won’t have the same promotion opportunities as their in-office colleagues. In others, remote workers’ refusal to return to the office is seen as a “red flag,” according to a recent survey.

As of February 2024, over 35 million American workers are at least partially remote, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the highest number of people working remotely part-time or full-time since December 2020.

Taken together, they make up almost 23% of the U.S. workforce – the highest share they’ve held since February 2021.

Looking at these trends, the full return to office is unlikely to happen, despite 90% of companies planning to achieve it by the end of the year. As our own study from last year has shown, most remote workers would quit if asked to start working on-site all of the time.

That said, it is true that the share of people working remotely full-time is declining, as are vacancies for fully remote workers, as hybrid work is becoming a preference for most employees.

In this study, we make sense of these conflicting trends, reveal the industries and locations where remote workers continue to thrive, and outline the general state of remote work in America in 2024.

Remote Workforce Grows, Hybrid Work Flourishes: The State of Remote Work in 2024

As of February 2024, more than 35.3 million American workers do at least some amount of their work remotely, accounting for nearly 23% of the total U.S. workforce.

This is both the highest number of people in remote work since July 2020 and the highest percentage of workers doing at least some of their work remotely since February 2021.

Other than setting new records, remote workers are growing in number. Compared to this time last year, there are 4.3 million or 14% more American workers who are now fully or partially remote.

The lion’s share of this growth is due to the increase in hybrid work, where workers split their time between working on-site and remotely. As many as 87% of these new hybrid or fully remote workers, or 3.8 million people, appear to be in hybrid arrangements.

This, in turn, contributed to another important milestone in the evolution of remote in the United States.

Workers in hybrid arrangements, where some amount of work is done on-site and in the office, now make up more than 50% of all those working remotely.

This is a fairly recent trend. From the time the Bureau of Labor Statistics started collecting this data and up until November 2023, the majority of remote workers were fully remote. In recent months, hybrid workers constitute the majority of workers who are remote at least some of the time.

While 48% of remote workers remain fully remote, we are likely seeing the effects of return-to-office policies many companies started to enforce and disillusionment with remote work on the part of both managers and employees. 

As more remote workers begin to split their time between their workplace and their home or other remote locations, the typical number of hours put in remotely also begins to decline.

In 2024, a typical worker who is either fully remote or in a hybrid arrangement clocks in about 27 hours of remote work per week, which is roughly equivalent to just under three and a half 8-hour days.

This represents a rather significant decline, as just one year ago, a typical remote worker used to spend 29 hours - two hours more - working off-site

Colorado and the Coasts: Where Remote & Hybrid Work Thrives

With as many as 35 million workers being remote at least part-time, where are they based? Looking at the states by the share of the workforce that works remotely, a few clusters of states stand out.

First, it’s the states in the West and Northwest. As of 2024, Colorado has the highest percentage of workers that are fully or partially remote compared to any other state – 36%. Its neighbor state Utah has 29% of workers working remotely or in hybrid arrangements, with Oregon (29%) and Washington (30%) seeing similar rates of fully remote or hybrid work.

Then there’s California and Arizona, where around a quarter of workers spend at least some of their work time away from their office.

Another remote work cluster is in New England, where states like Massachusetts (32%), Vermont (27%), Connecticut (26%), and Maine (24%) all have around a quarter of their workforce operating in fully remote or hybrid setups.

Remote or hybrid work isn’t that popular in the Southeast of the country, where Mississippi (5%) and Alabama (9%) are the only two states in the United States with fewer than one in 10 workers being at least partially remote.

Joining them are Louisiana (12%), Arkansas (12%), and Oklahoma (13%), where the share of workers in remote or hybrid arrangements is just over 10%.

Curiously, Nevada (13%) has a rather low share of fully remote and hybrid workers in its labor force despite its proximity to other states where the makeup of remote and hybrid work is among the highest in the country.

The Capital of Remote Work Is Also the Nation’s Capital

At the metro level, one place is a runaway leader in terms of the share of people working remotely in its labor force: Washington, D.C. Here, 61% of workers spend at least some of their work time off-site, which is by far the highest share of all U.S. metropolitan areas.

Consistent with state-level findings, Boulder, CO, is its closest pursuant, where 50% of workers are at least partially remote. Two other Colorado entries—Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO, and Fort Collins, CO—are not too far behind, with roughly 40% of workers fully or partially remote.

Two Californian metros make the top 10 list. One is more centrally located along California’s coast, San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA, where 42% of workers work some hours remotely. The other is in Silicon Valley, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, where that share is 38%.

Surprisingly, York-Hanover, PA (41%) and Trenton, NJ (41%) are among the 10 metros with the highest proportion of workers being remote or hybrid. One thing these two places have in common is that the cost of living and housing is low in both metros compared to the rest of the country. This may make these areas attractive to workers who no longer have to live in the same potentially expensive cities where they work.

Another interesting commonality among the metropolitan areas on this top 10 list is that five of them are among the best places to live in 2024, according to the U.S. News Report.

Not All Jobs: Occupations That Embraced Remote and Hybrid Work

Looking at these geographical differences, it’s worth bearing in mind that, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s study, only about 37% of all jobs can be performed remotely. 

Meaning, the differences from one state or city to another are most likely determined by the types of industries and kinds of jobs that tend to dominate the local economy and workforce.

At the industry level, workers in Tech (70%), Business & Finance (58%), and Legal (52%) are most likely to be remote in 2024.

Zooming in on specific occupations, here are 20 with the highest share of workers who are partially or fully remote so far this year. In each of these occupations, two-thirds or more of workers work remotely at least some of the time.

Jobs in Insurance and Finance feature strongly on this list, with Underwriters and Compensation and Benefits Specialists having the highest share of remote and hybrid workers of all occupations in 2024.

Secondly, and predictably, you have occupations in Tech, such as Database Administrators (75%) and Software Developers (74%), where three-quarters of workers are off-site full-time or part-time.

Lastly, there are jobs in Media and Marketing, such as Writers (76%), Editors (67%), and Marketing Specialists (66%), where the overwhelming majority of people habitually work remotely.

A Question of Opportunity: Remote Work by Demographics

Let us now look at who is working remotely in 2024. Based on Census Bureau statistics, a few demographics stand out as significantly more likely to be working remotely, whether on a full-time or hybrid basis.

There is a notable difference between men and women, where the makeup of remote work among women (25%) is higher than it is among men (21%). 

Curiously, parents of kids under 18 were more likely to work remotely (25%) than those without children in the household (22%).

Another statistic that jumps out is the share of Asian Americans working remotely. Eclipsing the corresponding percentage of other races, some 34% of workers in this demographic put in at least some of their work time from remote locations.

By comparison, other minority races, such as Black or African American (16%) and Hispanic or Latino (12%), were less than half as likely to be working remotely in 2024. The share of partially or fully remote workers among White Americans is in line with the national average of 23%.

In line with the findings by occupation, remote work is considerably more popular with Americans with a college degree than among those without one. College-educated workers (40%) were four times more likely to be in remote or hybrid work than those with a high school diploma (9%) and more than twice as likely as those with some college education or an associate degree (18%).

Similarly, the propensity of workers to be at least partially remote increases with income. Around a quarter of workers in households with an income of $100,000 to $149,000 work remotely in 2024, while for households where the income is $150,000 or higher, that share is 37%.

Growth Across the Board: Increased Makeup of Remote Work in the Past Year

Despite pushback, the ongoing debate, and the return-to-office mandates, remote work continues to be on the rise, with 14% more workers fully remote or hybrid in the past 12 months.

States in the Southeastern U.S. might have the lowest share of remote workers, but they are also the ones seeing the biggest annual increase in remote and hybrid work. South Carolina leads the charge with 54%, Louisiana has 38% more people working remotely in 2024 than at this time last year, and Georgia saw a 30% year-over-year growth.

More broadly, 42 out of 50 states saw their share of workers in fully remote and hybrid arrangements increase since early 2023.

Among metros, remote and hybrid work are picking up fastest in areas such as Ogden-Clearfield, UT (+72% year-over-year), Greenville, SC (+70%), and San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA (+64%).

All evidence suggests that remote work is not only here to stay but is growing in popularity. As employees seek the flexibility and comfort remote work allows, the data shows they are prepared to compromise with their employers and managers. More employees now work in hybrid arrangements than in a fully remote setup.

Being limited to certain occupations, remote work may be seen as a privilege, as it remains an option mostly for higher-educated, more affluent Americans in white-collar jobs. That said, remote work’s popularity among women and parents suggests it’s something employers should consider with regard to hiring, employee engagement, and retention going forward.