Work From Home: California, Texas Named As Best States For Remote Work

The Wealth Advisor Contributor

July 2, 2020

More Americans are working from home than ever before.

While some companies are committing to flexible commuting policies in the future, others want their workers back at the office as soon as it’s safe.

And for some Americans who’ve adapted and even thrived at working for home, going back to the office is just not an option. Enter: remote work.

Since the global pandemic, 60% of Americans said that they their work-life balance was better, and that when work-from-home requirements are lifted, they would be interested in telecommuting more often, according to a survey by hiring firm Robert Harris.

However, not all remote work is the same. Although telecommuting jobs allow employees to work from home, they often require applicants to live in-state. And some states have more work from home opportunities than others.

California (1), Texas (2) and New York (3) boast the most remote work, according to FlexJobs, an online database for work from home opportunities. Florida (4) and Illinois (5) rounded out the top five states for telecommuting.

Conducted by FlexJobs, the survey monitored remote job postings for the past 18 months. So while numbers were affected by the recent Covid-19 work-home-requirements, FlexJobs said that they were not overly skewed. Instead, they found that remote work opportunities remained steady during Covid-19, as compared to other jobs during this unsettled economic time.

“While interest in remote work has been steadily rising for the past decade, we have obviously seen a sharp incline since the pandemic hit,” said Sara Sutton, Founder and CEO of FlexJobs. “However, one of the biggest misconceptions about remote jobs is that they can be done from wherever the worker chooses. In reality, only about 5% of remote jobs can be done from anywhere in the world, while the remaining 95% do have a geographic requirement, such as being based in a specific state.

Since Covid-19, FlexJobs experienced a 50% jump in traffic on their site as compared with a year ago, according to the database.

The following are the top states for work from home opportunities in 2020.