Something’s wrong in the modern workplace, partly due to the coercion to make employees cope with an unpleasant commute, extra costs in clothes and gas, office interruptions, and rigid schedules incompatible with child-rearing and two-career households — all because management doesn’t feel comfortable with remote work.
How remote work is changing our culture
The remote work trend that gathered steam during the COVID-19 pandemic gave many people a taste of a lifestyle without commutes and office buildings.
Reading the headlines, a casual reader feels there was a rush to remote work in 2020 and 2021, followed by a reversal in recent years. But that’s not what happened, exactly. In reality, on the whole, remote work rose steeply in the first two years of the pandemic and more or less stayed up. In 2019, some 9 million people worked remotely. In 2022, that number jumped to 50 million. And as of 2025, it was still around 36 million.
Despite pushback against remote work, it’s still a big enough factor to change the culture in small and big ways.
Remote work is reducing demand for office space, increasing suburban growth, shifting economic activity from urban cores to suburbs, driving migration to mid-sized and more affordable cities, expanding residential space needs, and reshaping workplace culture with greater flexibility (but less social interaction).
The trend hasn’t been kind to some businesses, including downtown restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners, public transit systems, office supply retailers, urban gyms, corporate catering services, and commercial real estate firms focused on office leasing.
Other business types, however, are booming: home office furniture companies, video conferencing and collaboration software providers, suburban real estate agencies, home improvement retailers, local delivery services, coworking space operators, and broadband internet providers.
One of the biggest cultural changes is the rise in digital nomad living — working while traveling or temporarily living abroad. Before 2019, fewer than 10 million people lived as digital nomads globally. By the end of 2025, the number is expected to land somewhere between 50 million and 80 million people.
And if the endless chatter on Reddit and other social sites is any indication, there is a huge number of people trying to figure out how to become digital nomads. On Reddit, people are constantly asking about how to get a “digital nomad job.”
The truth is that there’s no such thing. A job is either remote, or it’s not. If it’s fully remote, then the employee is free to go wherever they want. Many companies have limited positions that are fully remote. And some companies are totally remote, with every employee in the company working remotely full-time.
Companies friendly to remote work include: Affirm, Allstate, Amgen, Amplify, Atlassian, BELAY, CrowdStrike, Dropbox, HubSpot, Humana, Kraken, Pearson, Pinterest, Reddit, Ryder, Spotify, StackAdapt, Stride Inc., Twilio, and Vista.
By late 2025, remote work is more popular than ever, office work less popular, and smart companies are saving money and attracting top employees by offering the flexibility and freedom of remote work as a perk. And now we know that workers will accept substantially less pay, just for the ability to work anywhere but in the office.
