Hard to Believe it, But Only 4.4% of Job Postings Are Listed as Remote or Hybrid

In the Great Resignation, applicants hold considerable power. And only three percent of knowledge workers want to return to the office full time. While certain industries require workers to remain on site, some organizations – including heavy hitters like Twitter and Google – recognize they can attract job seekers to their companies by offering remote and hybrid work options.

But these companies are still in the minority. After analyzing the more than 9.1 million job listings in our JobsIndex, we found that only 4.4 percent were specifically listed as remote or hybrid. (Note: this number includes jobs that use various terminology for remote work, including “work from home,” “wfh,” “telecommute,” and “virtual.”)

Here’s what this data means for job boards and their clients.

Background: How Many Jobs Can Be Remote or Hybrid?

So what does it mean that only 4.4 percent of jobs are currently being offered on a remote or hybrid basis? A 2021 study estimates that 35 percent of the employed workforce worked remotely in 2020.

While some folks in that group are likely to return on site (educators, for instance), it gives us a rough understanding that about a third of all jobs could be remote. So there’s a clear gap between jobs that can be performed remotely and jobs that employers are currently advertising as remote.

There are two likely reasons for the gap:

1. Employers are insisting that employees return to the office, forcing jobs that could be remote to be done in person.
2. Employers are okay with remote work but not explicitly indicating this in job listings, meaning that these jobs aren’t being tagged properly on job boards.

Both could hurt employers’ ability to fill vacant positions.

Fortunately, job boards can help overcome the latter, empowering employers to reach more applicants by providing features that make it easier to classify jobs as remote or hybrid.

Job Boards Can Make One Small Tweak to Help Clients Find Candidates Faster

Not using or under-using tags for remote or hybrid work hurts job boards, their clients, and applicants. Why?

Today’s job seekers want remote work options. Seventy-four percent of Americans say remote work is a deciding factor in an offer, and more than 60 percent of workers would even take a pay cut to stay remote.

Employers have record-high competition for job seekers’ attention – there are nearly 1.8 positions available for every person seeking a job in the US. Offering hybrid and remote work is a clear differentiator. Job boards should encourage customers to explicitly state when remote or hybrid work is an option – and make it easy for their customers to highlight hybrid and remote status.

One way to do so is through the use of job tags.

Including Tags for Remote or Hybrid Work Helps Attract Applicants to Your Job Board

Adding remote or hybrid work tags…

1. Improves the UX of your site, making it easier for applicants to identify and search for remote or hybrid roles.
2. Increases the potential traffic to your job board by optimizing listings for Google for Jobs.

And there is plenty of traffic to pull. More than 500,000 people search “work from home jobs” each month in the US.

Failing to use job tags makes attracting this traffic more difficult. When applicants search for remote roles, your customers’ untagged remote listings won’t appear. This is particularly detrimental when 60 percent of job seekers start their searches with job boards online.

Adding job tags to indicate remote or hybrid work saves your customers time and money while connecting them with a larger pool of qualified candidates.

Remote and Hybrid Work Tags Drive Traffic to Your Site

The pandemic has permanently altered work preferences. And remote work has granted caretakers and disabled workers the freedom to safely perform their jobs while growing the talent pool for employers who offer work-from-home positions.

Using remote and hybrid tags gives your customers a leg up – these tags attract more talent to their listings. In this competitive labor market, job tags aren’t just an asset, they’re a necessity.

If you need help with sourcing or formatting the job listings on your site, reach out. We can easily add tags to enhance listings when we scrape jobs. We can also add other enhancements, including geo location and categorization. And even if we aren’t doing the scraping for you, we can take a job feed, add the relevant tags, and return the feed to you. We offer month-long free trials and access to more than nine million available jobs with our JobsIndex tool.