Getting people back to the office comes with a steep price tag — and those willing to swap their remote job for working in an office full-time could see the biggest change in their paychecks.
Salaries for fully in-office roles are climbing in the United States. Companies are offering an average $82,037 for in-person roles, a nearly 40% jump from what these roles paid in 2023 ($59,085), according to ZipRecruiter data provided to CNBC Make It.
Wages for remote and hybrid jobs haven’t grown nearly as much. As of March 2024, hybrid roles pay $59,992 on average, in 2023, that number was $54,034, ZipRecruiter reports. Remote jobs now pay $75,327, but in 2023, they paid an average $69,107. ZipRecruiter’s research is based on job listings from its platform and survey responses from more than 1,500 U.S. adults who started new jobs in 2023.
Those who switched from a remote job to an in-office job last year received a 29.2% pay bump — nearly double that of those who left an in-person job to work remotely. By comparison, job switchers who leave one remote role for another receive a 22.1% pay bump, while those who switch between in-office roles see a 23.2% increase in their salaries.
Johnny Bui, 25, left his remote consulting job in October 2023 for a hybrid position at the same level and is earning 33% more in his new role.
Bui, who works as a product analyst at Visa out of their Austin, Texas office, says he was happy to sacrifice the ability to work from home full time for better pay.
Given how competitive the job market has been in recent months — especially for remote roles — Bui says it’s a “fair trade-off.”
“People have gotten used to working remotely since the start of the pandemic to the point where it’s become a habit, and habits are difficult to get rid of,” he says. “At the same time, a lot of people are motivated monetarily, so I think higher pay is a smart incentive to get people back to the office. It at least sweetens the pot.”
Interest in remote work remains strong even as fewer employers offer it. Despite making up less than 10% of all job postings in the U.S., remote jobs receive nearly half (46%) of all applications, according to recent research from LinkedIn.
Wage increases for in-person jobs coincide with more companies cracking down on enforcing their return-to-office mandates.
A whopping 90% of companies plan to implement some type of return-to-office policy by the end of 2024, an August 2023 Resume Builder survey found. Nearly 30% say their company will threaten to fire employees who don’t comply with in-office requirements.
While some companies are taking more punitive approaches to enforce return-to-office mandates, others are using bigger paychecks as a tool to lure workers back to their desks.
“If employers can’t compete on flexibility, they’re having to compete more aggressively on pay,” says Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist. “The hope is that better pay might be enough to draw people back to the office,” she adds.
It could work. Employees who split their time between home and the office say the top work perk that would get them to come in more is their company covering commuting costs, according to a recent report from videoconferencing company Owl Labs.
Giving workers higher salaries to offset the cost of commuting is one way to meet that demand, Pollak points out.
Some companies might also be using better compensation to improve retention. Turnover remains high in industries with fewer remote opportunities, including transportation, manufacturing, health care and leisure and hospitality.
“There’s still quite a lot of churn in the industries where in-person work is more common,” says Pollak. “Employers in these fields might have experimented with short-term solutions to recruit more workers like sign-on bonuses or additional paid time off to get talent in the door, but those are just Band-Aids.”
She continues: “It seems like more employers are realizing that you need long-term strategies, whether it’s improving salaries or introducing better health-care packages, to hold on to your best workers.”
It’s too soon to tell if higher salaries will be enough to convince people to choose an in-office job over a remote offer. Several studies have shown that people are willing to take a pay cut to work remotely.
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