US Salaries Surging for Fully In-Office Jobs | BBC Worklife

While many jobs still offer hybrid- or remote-working patterns, more bosses are mandating their employees to return to the office on a full-time basis.

But for some of these companies, getting workers fully back on-site comes with a high price tag. This is particularly the case in the US, which has seen the most dramatic shift to flexible working – by January 2024, around 29% of all paid workdays were still worked from home. “Employers who cannot compete on flexibility will have to compete more aggressively on pay,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, based in California. 

The result is that US wages for fully in-office roles are surging. According to ZipRecruiter data, seen by the BBC, companies were offering on average $82,037 (£64,562) for fully in-person roles by March 2024 – an increase of more than 33% versus 2023 ($59,085; £46,499). The trend is cross-sector: compared to hybrid ($59,992; £47,211) and fully remote ($75,327; £64,320) roles, workers appear to be more likely to increase their salaries by returning to pre-pandemic office schedules. 

Part of this is compensating for the loss of flexibility that workers have prioritised for the past few years – the greater the push to relinquish that autonomy, the more employers have to offer to compensate. The ZipRecruiter data shows that workers who swapped from fully remote to fully in-office set-ups in the US through 2023 received a 29.2% pay bump – nearly double that of those moving the other way.

Read the full article here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240322-us-salaries-higher-in-office-jobs