Many giant firms like Amazon, Walmart, JPMorgan, and Uber have mandated 5 days per week within the workplace, and others together with Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft are again to 3 or 4 in-person days. However employees are nonetheless rebelling towards return-to-office insurance policies by coming in late, leaving early, “coffee badging,” and stealing snacks. Some even make money working from home after they’re imagined to be on the workplace, a development coined “hushed hybrid” and one thing managers are too burned out to implement.
A brand new examine by researchers at Harvard College, Brown College, and UCLA reveals employees nonetheless worth distant work a lot, they’d be prepared to take a large pay minimize in an effort to get it.
“On average, individuals are willing to forgo approximately 25% of total compensation for a job that is otherwise identical but offers partially or fully remote work instead of being fully in person,” in accordance with researchers Zoë Cullen (Harvard), Bobak Pakzad-Hurson (Brown), and Ricardo Perez-Truglia (UCLA).
To place that into perspective, if a candidate obtained a $200,000 job supply requiring 5 days in workplace and one other $150,000 supply that allowed distant work, on common the candidate who needed to make money working from home would take the $50,000 pay minimize, Perez-Truglia advised the Wall Avenue Journal.
New findings from examine
Researchers collected survey knowledge between Could 2023 and December 2024 in a subject experiment with Ranges.fyi, a platform offering complete wage knowledge for tech professionals. The survey gathered detailed knowledge on job provides and the options employees in the end selected, together with traits like complete compensation, the place the job is predicated, and whether or not the place is distant. The examine additionally used Glassdoor knowledge together with employer rankings in addition to quality-of-life and cost-of-living measures.
“Our estimate is three to five times that of previous studies, which we partly attribute to methodological differences,” the researchers defined.
In Could, LinkedIn launched a examine displaying practically 40% of Gen Z and millennial employees mentioned they’d take a pay minimize in trade for extra flexibility about the place they work. Throughout all generations, the share was 32%. They surveyed 4,000 U.S.-based employees. One other examine this 12 months by recruiting agency Robert Half confirmed when the hole between a candidate’s wage expectation and a suggestion is just too huge, many employers negotiate distant and hybrid work to get candidates to signal on.
Flexibility over cash
Laura Roman, a senior expertise acquisition supervisor with London-based advertising and marketing agency Up World, wrote in an April LinkedIn submit considered one of her candidates took a £7,000 pay minimize—about $9,300—for a completely distant job.
“The founder was hesitant at first. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. Why would anyone willingly take less money?” Roman wrote. “But then it clicked. They were offering something just as valuable as a bigger salary (for that candidate): flexibility.”
“Not everyone can afford to trade money for flexibility, but for those who can, it’s becoming a no-brainer,” she added.
Theresa L. Fesinstine, founding father of human assets advisory Peoplepower.ai, additionally beforehand advised Fortune she’s seen some job candidates settle for 5% to fifteen% much less pay in trade for distant work.
“There’s this unspoken exchange rate between flexibility and comp, and for some candidates, it’s worth a significant tradeoff,” she mentioned. That is very true “for those who value work-life balance or are saving on commute costs.”
Others, nonetheless, aren’t as eager on the thought of taking much less pay simply to work from their couches.
In response to a Harvard Enterprise Faculty examine displaying 40% of employees would take at the least a 5% wage minimize to make money working from home, one Reddit consumer questioned in a submit this 12 months: “As in, I continue working from home and they slash my pay by 20%? While the company benefits from not having space for me in the office (saving on electricity, rent, water, concessions, etc.), not paying my internet or phone, etc.?”
“Absolutely not,” the consumer wrote.
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