According to Upwork’s Remote Workers on the Move report, between 14 million and 23 million Americans have plans to move to a new U.S. city due to a growing population of remote workers.
The survey of over 20,000 U.S. workers found that, with many companies moving towards remote working policies, people are looking to move to areas that have a lower cost of living and away from major cities.
“Companies were thrown feet first into a massive experiment with remote work due to the pandemic. The experiment has gone well; and it’s changing the future of the workforce,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork. “Remote work is the fastest gamechanger for the U.S. economy since World War II when almost overnight there was a mobilization of production to provide arms for war.”
The study also found that 54.7% of residents in large cities want to move two hours away or more from their current location, which could indicate that they expect remote working to be a permanent fixture.
This shift is causing high price markets to take a hit. In fact, according to Apartments.com, the top 10 most expensive housing markets in the U.S. saw a 13% decrease in rent prices than rental markets in the bottom 10%.
Still, companies now have the opportunity to diversify their talent pool since geographical location is not a dealbreaker for organizations operating with a distributed workforce.
