Key Takeaways:

• The total number of remote workers in the U.S. stood at more than 22 million in 2023 after tripling throughout the last decade.
• Austin, TX, is currently the metro area with the highest share of remote workers at almost one-quarter of its total workforce.
• The WFH movement with the most impressive growth trajectory in the last 10 years was seen in Omaha, NE: a 366% growth.
• 20 of 109 U.S. metros continued their adoption of the remote work model even post-pandemic. The vast majority of them are mid-sized metros, led by Lancaster, PA.

The concept of remote work shifted significantly in the last decade, going from a perk usually reserved for freelancers and entrepreneurs to a widespread reality for millions of Americans. Clearly, the work-from-home (WFH) concept has reshaped the way businesses operate and leverage a global talent pool, as well as the way employees balance their professional and personal lives. And, while the WFH revolution has certainly been driven by advances in technology and shifting views of the workplace, there’s no denying that the global COVID-19 pandemic was the ultimate catalyst that turned remote work from an added benefit to a non-negotiable for many employers and employees alike.

As such, we leveraged the most recent Census Bureau data on the evolution of WFH in 109 U.S. metro areas to determine which had experienced the most significant changes in the last 10 years. We also looked at the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) that currently host the highest shares of remote workers, as well as those that are still seeing increases in the number of teleworkers even in the aftermath of the pandemic and the many return-to-office mandates.

Telework Triples in Last Decade to Surpass 22 Million Remote Workers in 2023

The widespread availability of remote jobs is easily noticeable in the high number of teleworkers in 2023, at precisely 22,486,510. This represents a 244% increase since 2014, when only 6,542,582 workers were remote — a growth that happened gradually throughout the last decade. Back then, only a small fraction (4.5%) of workers held remote positions, but that share saw a natural growth (to 5.7%) right before the pandemic in a sign that remote work was already beginning to become a popular solution to many pain points in the work field.

As expected, the total portion of remote workers surged to a significant 17.9% in 2021, which represented the peak of the WFH movement in the U.S. in a time when businesses were embracing remote work as a way to navigate the pandemic.

As of 2023, the share of teleworkers across the nation decreased to 13.8% of the total employed population with most metros registering post-pandemic drops in their numbers of remote workers. This is largely attributed to the reopening of many in-person businesses and the ones focused on manual labor, as well as the policies requiring a return to office full-time issued by many giant companies, like Amazon, Boeing, JP Morgan Chase and UPS.