In-Person Jobs Are Paying Nearly 40% More Than Last Year

By Sarah Lynch, Inc. (TNS)

If you want employees in the office, you might need to splurge on their salaries.

The average salary for in-person roles in the U.S. has risen to $82,037 so far in 2024—an almost 40 percent increase from the 2023 average, according to new ZipRecruiter data. While salaries for hybrid and remote jobs have also increased, the boost isn’t nearly as staggering: 9 percent for remote jobs and 11 percent for hybrid.

Some of the spike is due to the nature of the industries that are hiring right now, says ZipRecruiter’s chief economist Julia Pollak, including health care, transportation, and construction. Companies in these sectors are on the hunt for talent, but job seekers are “disproportionately interested in remote and hybrid opportunities,” Pollak says.

Indeed, just 8 percent of remote-capable workers in the U.S. would prefer to work on-site, according to a 2023 Gallup report. ZipRecruiter’s own recent report found that more job seekers are now looking for a hybrid or remote job than in the past two years.

And plenty of companies are providing those remote and hybrid options, too, as about 30 percent of paid days in the U.S. are now work-from-home days, according to the WFH Research group.

Thus, getting talent in the office is becoming a trickier feat—and with a still-tight labor market, workers have some leverage to make salary demands. That’s paying off in a big way for some: workers who switched from a fully remote job to an in-person job last year got an almost 30 percent pay bump, according to ZipRecruiter.

For employers that can offer flexibility, doing so can help minimize salary costs, Pollak says. A 2022 report from ZipRecruiter found that workers were willing to take a 14 percent pay cut, on average, if they could work remotely.

Those companies that can’t are now in a “bind,” Pollak says, striving to compete with better pay, benefits, or workplaces: “We’re seeing a lot of hard thinking and a lot of investment taking place in those in person businesses.”

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