The typical white-collar workweek seems to have become a mix of in-office and at-home work. But a job applicant’s chance of landing a new remote job, or one that allows mostly at-home work, is looking slimmer in the near future, according to a new analysis.
There are diverging paths between new job opportunities that require workers to show up in-person and new jobs that are at least partly remote, according to a new report by the job-search site Indeed.
Overall, postings on the job-search site declined 1% from June to November. It’s a sign of a labor market that’s cooling, but not yet stumbling from its once white-hot status, the report says.
“Employers’ hiring appetites are no longer as ravenous as a few years ago,” wrote Nick Bunker, Indeed’s director of economic research.
On Thursday, government data showed last week’s jobless claims climbing to 231,000. That was a three-month high, and another hint at the softening market. In October, the economy added 150,000 jobs, a slightly-below the forecast number, while the unemployment rate edged up to 3.9%.
In the sectors with the most jobs that can be performed remotely, however, the drop-off in job postings on Indeed has been more pronounced. These are jobs in fields including software development, human resources and marketing, Bunker said.
In fact, the drop is so sharp that the number of job postings for these “high-remote” sectors is now back at pre-pandemic levels.
The report considers remote work to be a job that’s either fully from-home or a hybrid arrangement, Bunker noted.
But from June to November, postings for jobs in sectors that are most likely to require in-person work increased by 3.1%, the Indeed report said. These are jobs in sectors like warehousing, retail, food preparation and manufacturing, Bunker noted.
By contrast, postings for sectors with high amounts of remote work were down 6.7% from June to November, and the number of job postings for sectors with mid-range capabilities for remote work were down 2.2%, Bunker said.
Economic circumstances are powering which types of jobs postings are on the rise, he said.
“I don’t think it’s anything inherent about remote work causing the decline,” Bunker said. “The types of jobs that have pulled back more are tied to industries that have had a harder landing as of late.”
In the sectors where remote and hybrid work are prevalent, such as software development, the share of jobs advertising remote work hasn’t declined, so it’s not as if these bosses are rethinking their approach — they’re just hiring less for now, Bunker noted.
Read also: Warning: Jobs advertised as ‘remote’ don’t always stay that way
The new numbers come while the hybrid workweek seems to becoming a permanent feature at many companies. Nationally, average office occupancy rates during the workweek have been hovering at around 50% of pre-pandemic levels this year, according to Kastle Systems.
On the busiest days in early November, that national average office occupancy rate climbed to nearly 60%. On the slowest days, it dropped to 33%, according to the security-technology provider.
An ongoing survey of working arrangements and attitudes from researchers at Stanford University, the University of Chicago and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México is another example of the rise of hybrid schedules.
Nearly half of people who were able to work from home (46.7%) said they have a hybrid schedule and more than one-third (33.9%) said they were fully on-site, according to the most recent results of Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes released in early November.
But the dream of a completely remote work schedule remains for many people. Three in 10 workers said they would want to work from home the entire week, making it the most commonly cited length of time.
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