Business
The remote work fight isn’t over: Workers are willing to take a major pay cut up to 25%, according to new Harvard study
Many large companies like Amazon, Walmart, JPMorgan, and Uber have mandated five days a week back in office, and others including Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft are back to three or four in-person days. But workers are still rebelling against return-to-office policies by coming in late, leaving early, “coffee badging,” and stealing snacks. Some even just work from home when they’re supposed to be in office, a trend coined “hushed hybrid,” and something managers are too burned out to enforce.
A new study by researchers at Harvard University, Brown University, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) shows workers still value remote work so much, they’d be willing to take a massive pay cut in order 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,” according to researchers Zoë Cullen (Harvard), Bobak Pakzad-Hurson (Brown), and Ricardo Perez-Truglia (UCLA).
To put that into perspective, if a candidate got a $200,000 job offer requiring five days in office and another $150,000 offer that allowed remote work, on average the candidate who wanted to work from home would take the $50,000 pay cut, Perez-Truglia told The Wall Street Journal.
New findings from study
Researchers collected survey data between May 2023 and December 2024 in a field experiment with Levels.fyi, a platform providing comprehensive wage data for tech professionals. The survey gathered detailed data on job offers and the alternatives workers ultimately chose, including characteristics like total compensation, where the job is based, and whether the position is remote. The study also used Glassdoor data including employer rankings as well as quality-of-life and cost-of-living measures.
While it’s not necessarily news that workers would be willing to take a pay cut to work remotely, past studies have underplayed the degree of pay cut they would accept, according to the Harvard/Brown/UCLA study.
“Our estimate is three to five times that of previous studies, which we partly attribute to methodological differences,” the researchers explained.
In May, LinkedIn released a study showing nearly 40% of Gen Z and millennial workers said they would take a pay cut in exchange for more flexibility about where they work. Across all generations, the share was 32%. They surveyed 4,000 U.S.-based workers. Another study this year by recruiting firm Robert Half showed when the gap between a candidate’s salary expectation and an offer is too big, many employers negotiate remote and hybrid work to get candidates to sign on.
Flexibility over money
Laura Roman, a senior talent acquisition manager with London-based marketing firm Up World, wrote in an April LinkedIn post one of her candidates took a £7,000 pay cut—about $9,300—for a fully remote 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, founder of human resources advisory peoplepower.ai, also previously told Fortune she’s seen some job candidates accept 5% to 15% less pay in exchange for remote work.
“There’s this unspoken exchange rate between flexibility and comp, and for some candidates, it’s worth a significant tradeoff,” she said. This is especially true “for those who value work-life balance or are saving on commute costs.”
Others, however, aren’t as keen on the idea of taking less pay just to work from their couches.
One Reddit user questioned in a post this year in response to an Harvard Business School study showing 40% of workers would take at least a 5% salary cut to work from home: “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 user wrote.
Would you take a pay cut to work remotely? Send your thoughts to sydney.lake@fortune.com.
