Workers Are Willing to Sacrifice Pay for Remote Work: Survey

As companies like Amazon, JPMorgan, and AT&T implement stricter return-to-office policies, a new study shows that tech workers will accept significantly less pay for positions that are hybrid or fully remote.

Researchers from Harvard, Brown, and UCLA recently released a study that found many tech workers were willing to give up a quarter of the salary they could have had for the chance to work remotely or in a hybrid setup rather than in person.

The study, which examined 1,396 workers in the U.S. tech world, mostly software engineers, product managers, and data scientists, found that workers who accepted remote or hybrid positions agreed to a salary that was 25% lower on average than what they were offered for a similar fully in-person position.

Everyone in the study had received at least two job offers between May 2023 and December 2024, averaging around $239,000 a year, and accepted one of the positions. On average, these tech workers were 32 years old with nearly seven years of experience under their belts.

Related: Hybrid Workers Were Put to the Test Against Fully In-Office Employees — Here’s Who Came Out On Top

UCLA Economics Professor and study co-author Ricardo Perez-Truglia told The Wall Street Journal the average amount tech workers were willing to give up for remote or hybrid work was more than expected.

Previous studies found that the average worker was willing to accept a pay cut of around 10% to work fully remotely. For example, an August survey of 1,000 employed Americans released by Youngstown State University found that in-person respondents said they would take an 11% pay cut for a remote or hybrid job.

“Our estimate is substantially higher,” Perez-Truglia and the other co-authors wrote in the study.

According to the researchers, the higher 25% estimate likely boils down to two main reasons: First, the study focused specifically on high-earning tech workers, who may place extra value on remote options and be willing to trade more salary. Second, instead of using hypothetical survey questions like other studies, the study analyzed real job offers that respondents received from major companies such as Google, Meta, and Apple — meaning those pay cuts actually happened when people chose remote or hybrid over in-person roles.

Related: Remote Walmart Employees Question Return-to-Office Policy, Some Opt to Quit Instead of Relocating

The survey respondents also factored in insights from Glassdoor, a site where current and former employees anonymously leave reviews of companies, when deciding where to work. Still, remote and hybrid work arrangements ultimately mattered more in their decision-making, especially when it came to taking a lower offer.

Additionally, the survey found that there was little difference in how workers felt about hybrid and fully remote jobs — fully remote roles were only slightly more appealing. According to Perez-Truglia, the findings indicate that even offering employees one or two work-from-home days a week could sway their preferences and help companies attract top tech talent.

“Clearly there can be a compromise,” Perez-Truglia told the WSJ.

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Related: Looking for a Remote Job? A New Survey Says It Could Be Harder to Find Than You Think.

As companies like Amazon, JPMorgan, and AT&T implement stricter return-to-office policies, a new study shows that tech workers will accept significantly less pay for positions that are hybrid or fully remote.

Researchers from Harvard, Brown, and UCLA recently released a study that found many tech workers were willing to give up a quarter of the salary they could have had for the chance to work remotely or in a hybrid setup rather than in person.

The study, which examined 1,396 workers in the U.S. tech world, mostly software engineers, product managers, and data scientists, found that workers who accepted remote or hybrid positions agreed to a salary that was 25% lower on average than what they were offered for a similar fully in-person position.