Key Points:

  • Remote work continues to be durable as searches for remote work and job postings advertising remote options remain elevated on Indeed.
  • However, the remote share of Indeed job postings has declined from 9.8% in February of this year to 8.8% in August.
  • This drop primarily reflects the relative weakness in job postings for certain roles more likely to advertise remote work, such as tech jobs, not a significant and broad-based pullback of remote postings.

Remote work endures

Interest in remote work endures in the US labor market. Searches for remote work were 9.7% of all searches on Indeed in August, almost five times the share in February 2020. 

Line graph titled “Percentage (%) of remote job searches.”
Line graph titled “Percentage (%) of remote job searches.” With vertical axis ranging from 0% to 10%, Indeed tracked the share of all searches on the US Indeed platform that contained terms related to remote work.

Remote job opportunities in the US are still relatively abundant. Some 8.8% of job postings on Indeed advertised remote work options in August 2022, up from 2.7% on average in 2019. 

Line graph titled “8.8% of Indeed job postings advertised remote work in August.”
Line graph titled “8.8% of Indeed job postings advertised remote work in August.” With vertical axis ranging from 0% to 10%, Indeed tracked the share of all job postings on the US Indeed platform that contained terms related to remote work.

Job postings are falling fast in remote-friendly sectors

While remote job postings are a much larger share of all postings than before the pandemic, the remote share has declined from its peak in February. However, this downward trend reflects mainly a sharper hiring pullback in sectors that are more likely to advertise remote work. Some of the most aggressive declines in Indeed job postings are happening in remote-friendly sectors such as Software Development, Information Design & Documentation, and Media & Communications.

Line graph titled “Job postings by occupation remote-work share.”
Line graph titled “Job postings by occupation remote-work share.” With vertical axis ranging from -25% to 75%, Indeed tracked the growth of job postings in three different groups of occupational sectors – low remote share, medium remote share, and high remote share – as separate lines. The high-remote group has seen the weakest growth recently.

But remote work is holding up despite a decline in hiring appetite

Take the Software Development sector, for example. Hiring appetite for these jobs is still elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels, but it has faded in recent months. Job postings on Indeed for this sector have declined by over 17% since the beginning of this year through September 2. At the same time, the remote share of postings in the sector has fallen only 0.6 percentage points to 38%.

Line graph titled “Remote job postings remain elevated in Software Development.”
Line graph titled “Remote job postings remain elevated in Software Development.” With vertical axis ranging from 10% to 40%, Indeed tracked the share of Software Development job postings on the US Indeed platform that contained terms related to remote work.

There are fewer advertised remote job postings in the aggregate than earlier this year. But that shift is mostly the result of fewer postings in remote-friendly fields than a broader move away from touting remote work. Perhaps employers will change their tune on remote work if the labor market significantly cools off, but for now, job seekers have a relative abundance of remote-friendly options. 

Methodology

We identify job postings as open to remote work if the job title or description includes terms like “remote work,” “telecommute,” “work from home,” or similar language, or if the location is explicitly listed as remote. These postings include both permanent and temporarily remote jobs, though employers often don’t specify.

We calculate the remote share of postings on a daily basis. When reporting data on specific months we present the monthly mean of the daily series

Data on seasonally adjusted Indeed job postings are the percentage change in seasonally adjusted job postings since February 1, 2020, using a seven-day trailing average. February 1, 2020, is our pre-pandemic baseline. We seasonally adjust each series based on historical patterns in 2017, 2018, and 2019. We adopted this methodology in January 2021. Data for several dates in 2021 and 2022 are missing and were interpolated. Non-seasonally adjusted data are calculated in a similar manner except that the data are not adjusted to historical patterns.

The number of job postings on Indeed.com, whether related to paid or unpaid job solicitations, is not indicative of potential revenue or earnings of Indeed, which comprises a significant percentage of the HR Technology segment of its parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. Job posting numbers are provided for information purposes only and should not be viewed as an indicator of performance of Indeed or Recruit. Please refer to the Recruit Holdings investor relations website and regulatory filings in Japan for more detailed information on revenue generation by Recruit’s HR Technology segment.