You may have to look a little harder these days for high-paying jobs that don't require you to go into the office.
Listings for hybrid jobs paying $100,000 or more plummeted 69% in the last quarter of 2023 from the quarter prior, the careers site Ladders said in a report published Monday. The company, a site for high-paying jobs, looked at almost half a million job openings listed on its site from October through December for the report. It found that for high-paying, fully remote jobs, availability fell 12% quarter-over-quarter.
The availability of in-person jobs ballooned 93%, Ladders reported.
"Jobs that pay $200,000 or more really drove the increase for in-person roles," John Mullinix, Ladder's director of growth marketing, wrote in the report. "Companies want their highest earners in the office for collaboration and leadership."
The changes build on trends also observed in Ladders' quarterly report for Q3, in which in-person-job availability was found to have grown steadily while hybrid job listings fell slightly near the end of the quarter and remote job opportunities saw little flux.
"Companies that did not necessarily want their employees to go remote and just had to are leaning more towards the in-office jobs now," Mullinix told Business Insider. "That's partly aspirational from the top down, where the change is coming from the executive level and the upper management level to push employees back into the office because they believe productivity and performance are down. But in reality, most studies indicate that's not actually true."
The changes Ladders observed in 2023 in where employees are expected to work could affect hiring, retention, and pay prospects this year.
"What might happen is bigger companies with higher budgets for payroll might take away some of that work flexibility as far as hybrid and remote because they can, and to get employees, we might see them offer higher salaries instead for decreased flexibility," Mullinix said. "We might see smaller companies that are more nimble for certain industries use flexibility as a bargaining chip to get higher-level talent that they wouldn't normally be able to afford."
