Advertised Salaries Report 2024: How compensation changes for remote, office and hybrid workers

Remote and hybrid work has experienced a boom in popularity following the pandemic, helped along by technology like call center software for small business. This new way of working has led to many changes, including the way employees are compensated.

Do employees in America earn more when working from home, in the office, or on a hybrid basis? This is the core question that sits at the heart of our new research analyzing almost 15,800 job listings with salaries from the 30 biggest cities in the U.S.

In this analysis, we've reviewed how the average salaries compare across the country in popular jobs that could be performed remotely. It turns out, those remote workers might be getting more flexibility and more money.

Key findings

• Only 43.15% of job adverts in the U.S. list salary information. Charlotte, North Carolina was the worst city for this (11.76% of job ads) while Seattle, Washington, was the best (76.74% of job ads).
• Remote workers in America earn $8,553 (9.76%) more than office workers, from an analysis of 30 ‘remote-capable' jobs. Hybrid workers' salaries were only $140 less than remote workers.
• Baltimore, Maryland has the highest difference (39.16%) in advertised salaries between remote workers and office-based jobs, followed by Indianapolis, Indiana (29.76%).
• Hybrid workers in Detroit, Michigan, have the highest salary difference (29.24%) when compared to office-based roles, followed by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (27.44%).
• San Antonio, Texas, was one of five cities where office-based jobs have higher advertised salaries compared to remote roles with a 6.85% difference.
• Office managers earn 31.71% more working remotely than they do in the office, the most out of any job analyzed, followed closely by PR managers with a 30.16% difference.
• There were only six roles in our analysis that earned higher salaries when working in an office, with junior web developers earning 12.52% more in the office compared to working remotely, the most out of any role analyzed.

How many jobs list salary information online?

One key aspect for job hunters, which was a challenge to uncover, was salary information per advertised job role. Sadly, from our analysis of over 35,000 job listings, we found that only 43.15% of jobs advertised online listed salary information, either giving a range or an exact compensation amount.

Seattle, Washington, was the best city for this as over three-quarters (76.74%) of the city's job adverts had salary information, followed by San Diego, California (73.71%). Charlotte, North Carolina, was the worst city for this, with just 11.76% of its job adverts containing salary information. Houston, Texas, was the second-worst city with just one in four (25.64%) job ads containing salary details.

You can see the top and bottom five cities for salary transparency in the tables below.

Top five cities for salary transparency

Worst five cities for salary transparency

Ultimately, for our study, it meant we could only use data from almost 15,800 job listings that actually contained salary information. This is still a comprehensive dataset but it did reveal how difficult it is for some employees to find out compensation information before contacting recruiters and hiring managers.

Keeping this background in mind, let's see what the data revealed.

Do remote workers earn more than office workers?

The simple answer is yes.

Nationally, remote employees earn 9.76% more than those working the same job in an office. While those working on a hybrid basis (a mixture of in-office and working remotely) earn a similar amount, around 9.61% more than those working in an office.

Across the 30 jobs and 30 cities analyzed in this study, in monetary terms, remote workers earn $8,553 more than their in-office counterparts.

Nationally, we found that the average remote worker salary, from our analyzed jobs, was $95,158, hybrid jobs advertised a very similar $95,018, while in-office roles paid much lower at $86,305. 

Evidently, there are a couple of clear advantages to remote and hybrid work. Technology like cloud phone systems provide flexibility to remote workers, and there is likely a financial advantage as well.

Which cities have the biggest earning difference between remote and in-office employees?

Taking this data we compared the average salary listed across 30 jobs analyzed in each city for remote positions, office, and hybrid roles. The below reveals how these three salaries change, specifically for the top ten cities where employees earn more for doing the same job remotely compared to being in the office.

Top 10 cities where remote workers earn more than office workers

Baltimore, Maryland, has the highest average difference between advertised salaries for remote and office employees, with those working from home earning an average of 39.16% more than those in the office. There were many jobs that contributed to this difference, for example, project managers in Baltimore working in the office had an average salary of $89,513 listed in job descriptions, whereas remote roles for the same job were offered a much higher average of $132,450 compensation. Data analysts in Baltimore also saw a large difference, with office-based jobs offering an average of $58,679, compared to $116,418 for remote positions.

Workers in Indianapolis are on average better off looking for remote jobs too as they could earn an average of 29.76% more compared to office workers. This huge discrepancy can be seen in jobs such as operations analysts, where job adverts offered an average of $52,500 for office workers, but $102,882 for remote roles.

You can see how this changes across 10 cities in the table below, which reveals the best cities for remote workers.

Top 10 cities where hybrid workers earn more than office workers

Taking the same dataset, we also reviewed the cities where hybrid workers earned more than office workers. Many of these top ten cities are the same as the best cities for remote workers, this is because, nationally, remote job salaries tended to be very similar to hybrid roles.

The best city in the U.S. for hybrid workers compared to their office-based alternatives was Detroit, Michigan, where hybrid employees earned 29.24% more than those working in the office. Project managers in Detroit working from the office are offered an average of $103,739, but those working on a hybrid basis are seeing advertised salaries of $142,500.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, came in second, where hybrid employees earn 27.44% more than those in the office, and Baltimore crops up again, with a 24.07% difference in salaries in favor of hybrid workers.

Based on both of these rankings it's clear that Baltimore employees working in the office may be missing out on a salary increase by not looking for remote and hybrid jobs.

Cities where office staff earn more than remote employees

Out of the 30 most populous cities we analyzed, there were only five where the average salary for remote workers was lower than the job adverts for office-based roles.

San Antonio, Texas, had the largest discrepancy between remote and office employees, where remote workers earn an average of 6.85% less, followed by Phoenix, Arizona, where remote workers are offered salaries 4.27% less than their office counterparts. For Chicago, the difference between office and remote roles is much lower at 1.88%, meaning advertised salaries are very similar.

What is important to note about this data is that in all of these five cities, apart from Phoenix, hybrid workers have higher average salaries than office-based employees. This indicates that while fully-remote jobs might not be paid higher, employees in these cities should likely look for hybrid options instead.

Which jobs have the biggest earning difference between remote and in-office employees?

We reviewed 30 of the most popular jobs that could be done remotely and in an office. This, of course, discounted jobs such as a surgeon or a mechanic from our analysis, but included jobs across finance, customer service, marketing, technology, health, and more. You can see the full list of jobs in the methodology at the end of this page.

Top 10 jobs where remote workers earn more than office workers

Perhaps somewhat ironically, office managers can earn more when not working in an office. Even if an office manager is working at home they still need to manage the business phone, work with vendors, manage payroll, and keep on top of company procedures and performances.

After office managers, PR managers had the biggest difference between office-based roles and remote jobs at a 30.16% difference, followed by customer service managers (25.98%).

Top 10 jobs where hybrid workers earn more than office workers

We also took a look at the jobs where hybrid workers were offered more money than office workers in the same roles.

Executive assistants, those responsible for organizing and troubleshooting schedules and workloads for high-level executives, earn more on average when working on a hybrid basis compared to working in an office. The difference was high at 44.93%, with the average hybrid executive assistant getting paid $95,649 compared to $60,556 when in the office.

After that, IT support technicians also received a large pay increase of a third (33.24%) when working on a hybrid basis as opposed to solely in the office. You can see the top ten roles for hybrid workers compared to office employees in the table below.

Only 6 roles earn more working in an office

Across the 15,700 jobs and 30 job roles we analyzed that can be both office and remote based full-time, only 6 have an earning potential higher in an office when compared to being remote.

If a junior web developer were to take a full-time remote role, their earning potential would be impacted more than any other role, with a 12.52% swing in the wrong direction between remote roles and those in an office.

Why do remote and hybrid workers earn more than office employees?

It's likely employers are passing on savings from having a reduced office space, or no office at all, to employees to attract better talent with higher salaries.

One 2022 study however did find that employees are prepared to take an average of 14% pay cut to get a remote role, which could mean that the gap between office and remote salaries may shrink over time as employers use remote working as a benefit to negotiate lower salaries.

Hybrid and remote work is here to stay

A 2023 Gallup poll  found that only 3% of those in ‘remote-capable' jobs (where they could do the job remotely), want to work exclusively in the office. The desire for full-time office roles has diminished greatly.

The pandemic accelerated this remote work shift, and despite some recent companies forcing employees back to the office  full-time, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Companies should try to adapt their remote working processes to ensure their employees can perform at their best while still maintaining the best class of customer service for customers and clients.

Methodology

We scraped job listings for full-time roles from LinkedIn jobs labeled as ‘Remote', ‘Hybrid', or ‘On-site' aka ‘Office' as set by the job board's own filters. In total, 35,025 job listings across 30 popular jobs in the 30 most populous cities  were analyzed. Of that initial dataset, 15,798 listings had salary information included in the job description. If a job advert had salary listed as a range, the study used the median average amount. Charlotte, North Carolina was discounted from the salary comparison part of this analysis as it had too few roles advertised to review average salary information.

The 30 popular jobs were chosen based on online rankings from Zip Recruiter, Zippia, and FlexJobs. These were ‘remote-capable' jobs that could be performed both in an office and in a remote setting to be able to compare salaries for the same role directly. The jobs analyzed were:

• Data Analyst
• Office Manager
• Customer Service Manager
• Operations Analyst
• Actuary
• Account Manager
• Social Media Manager
• Project Manager
• Staff Attorney
• Case Manager
• Software Engineer
• Financial Advisor
• Sales Assistant
• Nurse
• Marketing Manager
• Insurance Underwriter
• Executive Assistant
• UX Designer
• Copywriter
• Management Consultant
• Hiring Manager
• Content Marketer
• Senior Accountant
• Payroll Specialist
• Junior Web Developer
• IT Support Technician
• HR Manager
• Public Relations Manager
• Supply Chain Manager
• Insurance Verification Specialist*

*There were not enough job adverts with salary information for Insurance Verification Specialists to accurately compare, therefore it was discounted from the analysis.

Job description and salary information was taken on 06/05/2023.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.