The golden age of remote work may be coming to an end

During the pandemic, job postings for in-person service roles, such as restaurant and retail work, experienced the most significant decline in areas traditionally hosting a substantial number of jobs amenable to remote work. Fast forward three years, and the scenario has flipped; in many of these same areas, job postings for positions that can potentially be performed remotely are plummeting compared to national averages.

Nationwide, job postings saw a 16% year-over-year decrease in August. However, in numerous metros categorized as high-remote-eligible—areas where a larger-than-average portion of jobs can potentially be executed remotely, though not necessarily where a high percentage of jobs are currently remote—postings dropped by more than 40% during the same period. These metros face a double challenge: having shed numerous in-person service roles in the pandemic's initial years and now witnessing a decline in remote-friendly jobs as hiring contracts in sectors traditionally conducive to remote work, such as technology and sales.

Among all analyzed metros (those with at least half a million residents), job postings for software development roles experienced the steepest decline over the past year, plummeting by 58% from August 2022—an about-face from the peak levels that surpassed pre-pandemic figures by 130% as recently as March 2022. Information Design and Documentation roles followed closely behind, registering a 51% decline over the past year. Excluding Banking and Finance, sectors witnessing the most substantial year-over-year drops in total job postings are those with a substantial proportion of potentially remote jobs. Furthermore, postings in these relatively more "remote-friendly" sectors are experiencing the swiftest decline.

As of August, almost one-third of job postings (32%) in the San Jose metro—central to Silicon Valley and home to numerous remote-capable tech jobs—belonged to remote-friendly sectors. Simultaneously, overall job postings in the San Jose metro declined by 40% year-over-year. Similar trends were observed in the Seattle (down 36.2% year-over-year) and San Francisco metros (-33.5%)—both renowned for their deep-rooted tech industries. The correlation between metros with the highest share of potentially remote jobs and those experiencing the most substantial overall declines in job postings over the past year is evident.

While job postings in metros conducive to remote work may be encountering the brunt of the general decline in postings over the past year, this phenomenon is not exclusive to these metros alone. In the early stages of the pandemic, the remote work feasibility of many jobs, particularly in the tech sector, played a pivotal role in the initial drop in in-person postings in these large, affluent metros. Now, as in-person service sectors rebound, decreasing levels of remote-eligible jobs are pulling down total postings in metros featuring a significant share of jobs amenable to remote work. This shift is not limited to so-called "superstar" cities along the coasts but is evident in cities across the country.