The latest quarterly Flexible Working Index—a report which tracks evolving trends across the flexible jobs market—has recorded a sharp shift away from remote work among employers.
The Index analyzes data from Flexa, a platform where flexible companies get discovered. This latest analysis pooled data insights from a sample of over 360,000 job searches and over 2,200 job adverts between July and September 2023.
Over the last quarter, fully remote roles accounted for just 4% of job posts overall between July and September, on average.
The number of jobs advertising “fully remote” work, where companies are unlikely to have offices and have no requirement for staff to come in, has remained level, but very low.
Remote-first roles were more common than fully remote ones but were in sharp decline. Over the last three months, job adverts offering remote-first work dropped by 22%, accounting for 23% of all job posts in July, compared to nearly a fifth (18%) of all job posts in September.
However, the job seekers’ demand for remote work remains strong. The study shows the more flexibility companies offer staff around working locations, the more popular they are among job seekers.
Over the last quarter, 305 candidates were searching for “remote-first” roles, in which there may be office or co-working space available to use, but there is no obligation to come in.
Roles offering three to four work-from-home days per week still represented over a third of all job adverts in September.
The number of jobs advertising one or two days of home-based work per week almost doubled (up by 91%) over the last three months—accounting for 11% of all job posts in July, compared to 21% of all job adverts in September.
These findings come as 73% of firms who are currently attempting to recruit admit that they’ve found it difficult to fill vacancies.
