In the aftermath of the pandemic, one thing appears to be here to stay: working from home. Today, a much higher percentage of IT personnel are working from home, compared to pre-pandemic numbers. Our annual IT salary study finds that almost half of IT workers now ply their trade from home.
To get a deeper look into the work-from-home trends, we focused several questions in our survey on the subject. We asked respondents what percent now work 100% from home, what percent work full time in the office, and what percent work in a hybrid arrangement.
As detailed in Figure 5 from our full report, IT Salary Report 2023, IT staff members who work full time from home are now 45% at the median, up from just 18% last year. Another 25% of IT personnel work in a hybrid-work arrangement, at the median, down from 30% last year. Another 20% work full-time in the office, at the median, the same percentage as last year. In other words, there is a strong upward trend this year for IT employees to shift to 100% work from home, away from just a partial work-from-home arrangement. Nevertheless, the wide spread between the 25th and 75th percentiles indicates that there is quite a bit of variation in remote working models.
We asked the same question about the total company workforce. At the median, 67% of all employees at the companies in our survey now work full time at the office or other organization facility. That is a massive increase from last year, during the peak of the pandemic, when only 15% worked full time at the office or other organization facility, at the median. Another 22% enjoy a hybrid-work situation, at the median, which is up from 18% last year. Only about 10% of company employees work full time from home at the median this year, much lower than the 50% last year.
We received a variety of comments on these questions. “We’re as flexible as the work allows,” wrote one senior director of information systems. “For most staff, this means they can work where and when they choose. Specific roles in IT help desk are occasionally onsite for computer setup or for company or team social events.”
Regarding the total company workforce, we also received many comments. This question has a significant industry- and role-dependent factor, as our respondents reminded us: “We have police, fire, parks and recreation, waste-water treatment, and public works staff that cannot work from home,” one commented.
“There is a divergence between IT employees and organizational employees in general,” said Tom Dunlap, director of research for Computer Economics, a service of Avasant Research, based in Los Angeles. “As we emerge from the pandemic, employees generally are returning to the office, while IT staff members are moving even more strongly to work-from-home.”
The full salary report estimates 2023 salaries for 80 IT job functions in more than 400 US metropolitan areas and 20 sectors. The report is based on our annual salary survey of IT organizations in the US, along with other sources of compensation data as well as regional and industry data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. For trend information, we also use our annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study and data from our year-end Worldwide IT Spending and Staffing Outlook for 2023 study. A complete description of the methodology is provided at the end of this report.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of our report, IT Salary Report 2023. The full report is available at no charge for subscribers or may be purchased directly from our website (click for pricing). The complete 40-page executive summary and sample salary tables can be downloaded at no charge.