Job seekers are vying for remote jobs but the opportunities are drying up

Remote jobs became the go-to for many workers and employers during the Covid-19 lockdowns. However, many businesses have now begun to ask their workers to return to the office after two years of Covid measures. Employees on the other hand still prefer to work from home.

Finding a remote job is not easy today because employers’ return-to-office mandates have hiked up the competition for the few remaining remote positions. There was a brief period in the job market history following the pandemic where the power dynamic shifted to the employees. But today, the tides have begun shifting again. The job market is slowing down, and remote workers have to go back to the traditional work setting.

This has created a rift between what workers want and what employers are willing to supply. Pay raises are reaching a plateau, signing bonuses are smaller, and options for work flexibility are drying up. But the demand for remote jobs is still as high as ever, during a time when employers are rolling back work-from-home positions. According to the latest job site research, 50% of job applications submitted via LinkedIn are for remote positions. These comprise 15% of listings.

Rand Ghayad of LinkedIn says, “It’s the ‘great remote work mismatch.” They believe that the labor mismatches in the past have been about skills. However, the labor mismatches at present are different. This scenario is primarily due to workers looking for certain attributes of jobs such as remote work flexibility and the employers refusing to offer that.

For on-site work, there are still almost two open jobs per job seeker. The case is the opposite for remote positions. For each remote job posting on LinkedIn, there are two active competitors. That means there’s a narrower gap between the demand for remote jobs and the supply of workers. Indeed has also seen a slowing-down of work-from-home job postings in recent days. Between September and October, Monster.com saw a 21% increase in the demand for remote work positions.

This cooling down of remote work opportunities can be one of the first few signs of a change in the recent job market patterns. The aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to battle inflation have brought the unemployment levels up to 3.7%. By the next year, this percentage is expected to rise to 4.4%, creating over 1 million job losses.

Job seekers on LinkedIn are seen applying for 22% more openings than what was seen a year ago, signaling that it has become harder to score a job today. The availability of remote jobs varies a lot by industry. The number of remote jobs in sectors such as education, tourism, sports, and agriculture reduced drastically after places opened up fully. Industries such as manufacturing, finance, and insurance have recently begun to observe a plateauing of remote work positions.

According to Julia Pollak of ZipRecruiter, it will become more difficult for businesses to reach pre-pandemic office attendance rates. She does not think that it will be easy to put the genie back in the bottle in this situation. It isn’t easy to insist that workers come into the office every time after hiring remote workers who live somewhere else.