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Report: Here are the States & Cities Where People are Most Interested in Remote Work

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, companies all across the world shuttered their offices and began to operate remotely, allowing employees to work from the comfort of their homes. Not surprisingly, most employees immediately fell in love with working from home, enjoying the freedom and flexibility that comes with it.

As time has gone on and life has returned to something somewhat resembling normalcy, many businesses have started to ask their employees to return to the office. Some companies are requiring employees to be at the office on a full-time basis, while others are adopting a hybrid work schedule that lets employees work some days in the office and other days at home.

But not all workers have been ready to give up the remote work lifestyle. Over the last couple of years, employees have gained some leverage over employers in this labor market, and according to one recent study, only about half of all workers who have been asked by their employers to return to the office full time have actually complied.

Another recent survey found that 64% of workers would consider quitting if they were asked to return to the office full time.

The message is clear — most workers want the freedom to do their jobs from home.

But is that the case all across the country? Or are workers in certain regions more interested in remote work than others?

We worked together with a data science consulting firm to analyze and compare interest in remote working across all 50 states and many major metro areas across the US, looking at search trends and other publicly available data.

Here are the results of what we found…

 

Overview

Search interest in remote work opportunities has skyrocketed in recent years:

In the map below, you can see the increase in search interest in remote work opportunities prior to COVID and after COVID across the country. Some states have seen a bigger increase in interest in remote work than others:

We paired the changes in remote job interest with information on the cost of living in each state to identify if there is some association between the two. We find (as shown below) that there is a negative association between these two values. States with a lower cost of living were more likely to increase their interest in finding remote jobs.

 

State Rankings of Remote Work Interest

We calculated the increase in interest in remote jobs for each state by subtracting the interest before COVID from the interest after COVID. See the rankings below:

STATE	INCREASE IN INTEREST
North Carolina	51.6
South Carolina	48.9
Georgia	45.6
Tennessee	41.6
Florida	41.5
Ohio	40.5
Pennsylvania	40.3
Virginia	39.3
Arizona	38.6
Mississippi	38.4
Michigan	38.3
Illinois	37.5
Missouri	37.5
Indiana	37.0
Alabama	36.7
Texas	36.3
Maryland	35.9
Colorado	35.9
New Jersey	35.0
Kentucky	33.8
New York	33.5
Delaware	32.7
Rhode Island	31.9
Arkansas	31.5
Maine	31.1
District of Columbia	30.9
New Hampshire	30.5
Massachusetts	30.5
Washington	30.1
Wisconsin	29.7
West Virginia	29.5
Nebraska	29.1
Kansas	29.0
California	29.0
Wyoming	28.8
Alaska	28.6
Oklahoma	28.4
Nevada	27.6
Utah	27.5
South Dakota	27.5
New Mexico	27.2
Louisiana	26.9
Vermont	26.9
Idaho	26.8
Minnesota	26.7
Oregon	26.6
Iowa	25.5
Hawaii	25.3
Connecticut	24.6
North Dakota	23.2
Montana	22.6

 

City Rankings of Increase in Remote Work

We also calculated the increase in interest in remote work for around 200 metro areas across the country. These 50 metro areas have seen the biggest increase in interest:

METRO AREA	INCREASE IN INTEREST
Columbus-Tupelo-West Point MS	48.6
Augusta GA	46
Charlottesville VA	45.5
Greenville-New Bern-Washington NC	44.4
Charlotte NC	44.3
Columbia SC	43.9
Hattiesburg-Laurel MS	43.2
Jackson TN	43
Jonesboro AR	43
Jackson MS	41.6
Macon GA	41.3
Gainesville FL	40.7
Montgomery (Selma) AL	40
Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville) NC	40
Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne FL	39.9
Atlanta GA	39.5
Binghamton NY	38.9
Watertown NY	38.4
Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota) FL	38.2
Bend OR	37.7
Phoenix AZ	37.5
Charleston SC	37.2
Richmond-Petersburg VA	37.2
Florence-Myrtle Beach SC	36.9
Dallas-Ft. Worth TX	36.2
Memphis TN	36
Tallahassee FL-Thomasville GA	35.8
Waco-Temple-Bryan TX	35.7
Wilmington NC	35.7
Chicago IL	35.4
Wheeling WV-Steubenville OH	35.3
Dothan AL	35.2
Philadelphia PA	34.9
Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem NC	34.5
Shreveport LA	34.5
Lansing MI	34.4
Nashville TN	34.3
Elmira NY	34.2
Denver CO	33.9
Tulsa OK	33.9
Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York PA	33.8
Portland-Auburn ME	33.8
Washington DC (Hagerstown MD)	33.7
Birmingham AL	33.4
Paducah KY-Cape Girardeau MO-Harrisburg-Mount Vernon IL	33.3
Syracuse NY	33.3
Houston TX	33.2
Louisville KY	33.2
Little Rock-Pine Bluff AR	33.1
Columbia-Jefferson City MO	33

 

Methodology

We extracted the frequency of searches in each state about remote work using a number of relevant search phrases. We then examined the differences in search frequencies for these keywords two years before COVID versus two years after the start COVID. We control for seasonal changes in remote job interest by comparing a full two years before COVID to a full two years after. We use March 11, 2020 as the official start of COVID-19 as this is when it was declared a pandemic in the US. We report the amounts searches for remote work increased in each state and city after COVID-19 began. We also examine the relationship between these trends and local cost of living in each area.