[Study] Interest in Remote Work Surges 300% amid Shifting Employment Landscape

Remote work became far more popular as COVID-19 restricted workers to their homes, but even as vaccines have become widely available, interest in working from home has skyrocketed. From July 2021 to July 2022, remote work search queries jumped 300%, according to a jobs study compiled by Semrush.

Searches such as “remote jobs near me,” “part time remote jobs,” and “entry level remote jobs” more than quadrupled in popularity year over year. Meanwhile, the median share of remote jobs offered by job search websites is only 6.8%, indicating demand for remote work likely far outstrips supply. This comes as the labor market remains strong and unemployment sinks to 3.5%, indicating employers may have to continue offering favorable conditions such as remote work to lure talent. 

The most searched queries related to remote work are “remote jobs” - 260k monthly searches and 234% YoY growth, “remote jobs near me” - 52.8k searches and 654% YoY growth, “Amazon remote jobs” - 29.7k searches and 123% YoY growth, “part-time remote jobs” 28.3k searches and 308% YoY growth.

The enduring popularity of remote work was not the only potentially surprising search trend. Despite widespread tech layoffs, major employers such as Amazon, Meta, Google, Netflix, and Apple are as popular as ever.

Since autumn 2021, visits to the career pages of those five tech giants have doubled both in the US and around the world. Amazon career pages get an average of 7 million monthly views in the US. The next most popular career page is Meta’s, which earns 1.2 million monthly visitors. During summer 2022, visits to Amazon have only grown, hitting 18 million in August.

The top three jobs people are searching for in the US are flight attendant, medical assistant, and securities. The jobs with the biggest search growth year over year were data analyst, project manager, and proofreader jobs. The latter jumped 83%.

On the decline in popularity are pharmacy technician, administrative assistant, nanny, firefighter, and tutor jobs, all of which saw greater than 45% decreases in search volume.

Overall, job searches by state largely correspond to national trends. But there are some curiosities. For example, “phlebotomist” is the most searched profession in Utah, while in California searchers showed the most interest in “medical assistant” and “security” jobs. Jobs with the greatest growth in individual states include “blogger jobs” in Washington, “inspector jobs” in New York, “podiatrist jobs” in New Jersey, “lifeguards jobs” in Arizona, and “barista jobs” in Illinois. All of those occupations earned 120% YOY growth in search volume in each of those states.

Semrush provides an easy-to-use platform that small business owners and national marketing teams alike use to understand consumer search intent, create content that resonates with their target audience, and boost their overall online visibility. 

To collect and present the job search data, Semrush relied on its .Trends traffic analytics tool to analyze the biggest job portals’ web traffic. The company also analyzed Google searches related to jobs and careers with the help of its Keyword Overview tool and used Traffic Analytics to assemble data on web traffic for Big Tech career pages.

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