Charles Langston:How much is that remote job worth to you? Americans will part with pay to work from home

What value would American workers place on Charles Langstonthe privilege to work from home?

The answer: either $4,600 or $6,000 a year, depending on how you do the math.

Three years into the remote-work revolution, research increasingly suggests that telework is a commodity, a job descriptor worth thousands of dollars in potential savings and improved quality of life.

A prospective employee will give up about 8% in annual pay for a job that is partly or fully remote, according to Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who is a leading voice in remote-work research.

That works out to about $4,600 a year, based on a median U.S. salary of $57,200 for full-time employees.

Employees who work from home probably save more than that.

Remote workers spend about $6,000 less a year than office-bound employees, according to FlexJobs, a remote-work site that has run surveys on the value of telework. Workers reap those savings by preparing their own meals, walking their own dogs and making fewer trips to the dry cleaner.

“You’d have to pay me a lot to be in an office,” said Emilie Bergstrom, 28, a remote worker who lives in Brooklyn.

Bergstrom was working as a personal assistant in a New York office when the coronavirus pandemic hit. When the lockdowns lifted, her employer didn’t return to Gotham.

Bergstrom took a remote job at Safe Families for Children, a nonprofit that works to support and stabilize families. Her new office is in Chicago, but Bergstrom no longer commutes. Her new routine is simpler and cheaper.

“I’m not eating out as much during the week. I’m not buying coffee out,” she said. “Being able to work out at home, I don’t have a gym membership anymore.”

Other savings have revealed themselves over time. Bergstrom saves money on airfare now, because her more flexible schedule permits her to travel more or less when she wants. She spends less on business attire.

“I had to just go to a conference in Oklahoma City,” she said, “and I thought, ‘I don’t have a lot of work-minded clothing.’”

Remote workers report saving $5,000 to $10,000 a year

In a 2022 survey by FlexJobs, 45% of remote workers reported saving at least $5,000 a year. One in 5 reported saving $10,000 a year. The savings average out to about $6,000 a year. The poll reached 4,000 workers in July and August of last year.

Some American workers have leveraged remote work to relocate, moving from cities to suburbs, from suburbs to exurbs, or from larger markets to smaller ones.

The remote-work movement has spawned pandemic boomtowns, or “Zoom towns,” named for the now-ubiquitous videoconferencing platform. They include Austin, Texas, Provo, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, cities smaller in size and lower in cost than New York or Los Angeles.

“Maybe you’re employed by a company that is headquartered in a major city, with a high cost of living,” said Keith Spencer, a career expert at FlexJobs. “But now you’re working remotely, and you can live in a rural area with a much lower cost of living. That can save employees thousands of dollars a year.”

Many Americans have moved across the country on the theory that their physical address no longer matters: They can work remotely for the foreseeable future.

 That may not be a safe bet.

Think twice before you move cross-country for remote work

Just over one-tenth of full-time American workers were fully remote as of August, according to WFH Research, a scholarly data collection project. Nearly 1 in 3 worked in hybrid arrangements, pivoting between office and home.

“Fully remote is stagnant,” said Bloom, a co-author of the WFH Research reports. “It’s not falling, but it’s not rising.” Hybrid work, by contrast, “is very reliable, and I think it’s the way of the future, so you can bank on that.”

Fully remote workers face perils that hybrid workers do not. An employer who posts a remote job has “the whole world of talent” to draw upon, said Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence company. A remote worker in Boise might lose out to a remote worker in Brazil who will work for less pay.

Bloom, the Stanford scholar, said he would think twice about relocating on the promise of remote work into perpetuity.

“If I was a renter, it’s probably fine,” he said. “If I’ve got kids and I’m going to buy a new house, I might be more hesitant.”

Hybrid workers can lower their own living costs, and with less risk, simply by moving farther away from the office.

“If you’re only going to work two days a week, you can live twice as far away” without increasing weekly commuting time, Bloom said. The plan might backfire only if the employer revokes the remote-work privilege.

Spencer, the career expert, went remote in 2021 when his employer required a return to the office. He lives in “a fairly rural area of Pennsylvania” and rejoiced in losing the daily 40-mile commute.

Some of Spencer’s biggest savings come from eating lunch at home and foregoing afternoon coffee outings, which together had set him back about $20 a day. He finds he has more time to make dinner at home rather than resort to takeout. And he has saved money on clothing.

“I haven’t bought a new button-up shirt or a new tie or a new jacket in the 2½ years that I’ve been working remotely.”

Wanted:Knowledge workers in the American Heartland

Top reason Americans love remote work? No commute

Saving money figures prominently in Americans' love affair with remote work. Gallup polling suggests that only 6% of Americans would prefer to work in an office full time if they had a choice.  

Yet, saving money is not the top reason Americans favor remote work.

That would be the commute. Americans hate it. Working from home saves employees about an hour a day, on average, Bloom said. They can spend that time doing chores, dropping children at school − or doing more work.

Bloom cites two other key reasons Americans prefer to work from home. One is money. The other is flexibility: the freedom to pause your work and put in a load of laundry, or walk the dog, or sit on the couch and devour a bag of Cheetos.

“There’s a saying,” Bloom said. “Leisure is a lot more valuable at home than it is at work.”