If you are an employer hoping to survive and thrive during the projected recession, you need to read the statistics from the Bureau of Business Uncertainty. Or, risk getting Punked. Getting punked in business means layoffs, financial insolvency and bankruptcy. This article is written to provide you will invaluable information to prevent all of that.
Myth or Truth of Remote Job Availability ?
In the current slowing of global economic activity, increased inflation, and projected recession, workers still participating in the workforce are pondering their options to maintain financial solvency. This is true for current remote workers and aspiring work at home and work from anywhere workforce participants.
Therefore, much as been written of late about how employees are demanding remote work options and jobseekers are searching the key words “remote jobs near me” more so than responding to job announcements requiring their in office presence.
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During tightening economies, it is a natural, knee jerk reaction to lower household bills on transportation, entertainment, and meals. Conversely, everyone wants to try to find ways to earn more money and do more with less.
Such conditions have the effect of too much demand for remote jobs by workers who are unemployed, underemployed, overemployed; and just plain employed. There is also too little supply of remote job opportunities and vacancies.
Lack of supply of remote job opportunities may not be the trend for long. Why? Just like heads of households seeking to economize; corporations, small businesses and even nonprofits are trying to find ways for doing more with less also. This may mean an increase in the flow of remote job opportunities in the future.
Remote Workers: Cost Benefit Analysis Remote Jobs
Workers who fulfill remote jobs spend less time on personal grooming, professional attire, transportation, and commuting costs. They also experience reduced traffic-related stress, have greater autonomy and flexibility in setting schedules for remote job related tasks. If one were to calculate from a cost-benefits perspective just in dollar terms, the saved time for an individual working a remote job; it would equate to about 2% of their real wages according to labor economists.
In fact, economists show that current remote workers and aspirants are willing to take a pay cut that can range anywhere from 1.5% of earnings to about slightly more than 7% to take advantage of the monetary and nonfinancial benefits.
Researchers also explain that remote workers have shown a tendency to re-invest in the companies for which they are employed by allocating about 40% of the time savings that they would have spent for commuting and grooming back into the remote job tasks related to their remote job.
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At the same time that individual remote workers and job seekers searching for ‘ remote jobs ‘ near me understand the dollar value savings in obtaining a remote job and price their acceptable asking range for their salaries accordingly, economists argue that this tendency causes employers to immediately restrain wage growth.
Employers: Cost Benefit Analysis Remote Jobs
Maybe the C-Suite executives in corporate headquarters and small businesses may also see that the utilization of remote workers during an economic downturn as good for business?
Perhaps so.
Many studies, like the one completed by Stanford University in the summer of 2020, with results appearing in Psychology Today found that remote workers were:
- 5% more productive than their in-office workers peers, and an additional
- 9% increase in productivity gains were realized by the spring of 2022
Further, this same article referenced studies showing that remote work policies adopted by 307 companies led to an increase in innovation on account of greater remote work flexibility and autonomy.
National Bureau of Economic Research Data: Remote Jobs
As companies featured remote work options during the COVID-19 pandemic and shortly thereafter, studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) or supported by the NBER evidenced the following:
- the laborer’s (workers who work for an hourly wage or annual salary) share of Gross National Income dropped by slightly more than 1% overall
- there was a cumulative decline in wage growth (by 2%) in the two years during and after COVID-19
- after adjusting for the historic rises in inflation, real wages in the US for private sector employees fell by 3% (up to May 2022 data)
Survey of Business Uncertainty Data: Increase in Remote Work Usage
Regardless whether what has been written in mainstream media about the significant drop in job vacancies featuring remote work options, a forward looking Survey of Business Uncertainty study discussed in the NBER showed that employers are planning to increase, not decrease, remote job listing advertisements.
For instance, 38% of employers responded “yes,” when asked this survey question, “Over the past 12 months, has your firm expanded the opportunities to work from home (or other remote locations) as a way to keep employees happy and to moderate wage growth pressures?”
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But one would need to be very careful when interpreting the data. Employers situated in these industries were more likely to adopt remote work policies: finance, insurance, real estate, education, healthcare, social assistance, professional and business services, and information technology.
The uptick in use of remote workers by employers is expected to continue. By next year, 41% of participating employers expect to expand opportunities to work from home or work from anywhere.
In addition to an increase in the expanded remote work opportunities by employers participating in the Survey of Business Uncertainty study, these employers also provided insight into the other ways in which the adoption of remote work has changed and is expecting to change their future business practices. They state that increased use of remote work:
- almost 25% of the respondents indicated that remote work adoption enabled them to increase their use of part time employees
- 20% of the participants reported an increase in the use of independent contractors on account of remote work policies
- 10% of the employers indicated that they increased their use of leased workers
- 8% of the employers increased their use of overseas offshoring of work tasks and work projects
- 6% of the employers increased their use of domestic offshoring of work tasks and work projects
- 5% of the participants reported an increase in offering employment to physically disabled persons
Conclusion: Use Remote Work to Retain Competitiveness
In the end, the continued use and increased utilization of remote workers during times of economic uncertainty by large corporations, is a survival tactic that any company and small business should consider implementing to thrive and remain competitive in this turbulent marketplace.
