The craze and demand for remote work or work from home jobs is rapidly increasing around the world, as these jobs provide comfort, and you can work from anywhere and anytime according to your mood and needs.
According to data from Statista, the percentage of remote workers before the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA was 17%, but in 2021, the percentage of people working remotely increased to 44%. In India, the percentage was less than 5% before the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the peak of the pandemic, 32% of the Indian workforce was working remotely in 2020.
Another report from Buffer shows that 98% of workers want to work remotely for at least some of the time of their career.
Due to this sudden shift in work, people around the world are now willing to work from their homes because of comfort and flexibility. Because of these many benefits, 32% of hybrid workers considered a salary cut to work remotely full time (according to a report from PRNewswire).
Table of Contents
The Evolution of Remote Work from the Early 1970s
The concept of remote work was a thing back in hundreds or thousands of years, but it became famous in the early 1970s when a NASA engineer named Jack Nilles created the terms “telecommuting” and “telework” in 1973, referring to working remotely through telecommunication. In 1979, a team of five workers from IBM were working from home to test the effectiveness of telecommunications, and in 1983, the number of workers working remotely for the test increased to 2000.
Normalization of Working Online Among People in the Early 1980s
In the early 1980s, the normalization of working from home among people started. As a result of this, the number of Americans working from home increased by 4 million from 2003 to 2006.
In the early 1990s, the commercialization of the Internet started, and big e-commerce companies like Amazon in 1994 and eBay in 1995 were established, which allowed people to list and sell their products online. In 1996, Amazon launched its affiliate program, which allowed users to sell other people’s products and receive a portion of the earnings as commissions.
Several platforms and companies were established that provided opportunities for people to work online.
Later, Pyra Labs launched Blogger in 1999 (later acquired by Google in 2003), and Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little launched WordPress in 2003. Both of these platforms allowed people to set up their websites and monetize them using Google AdSense (launched in 2003). It was a great opportunity for people in the late 1990s and early 2000s to earn money from their homes by using these platforms.
Also check: 5 high income skills to learn in 2024
The Rise of Social Media Platforms in the mid-2000s – 2020s
Social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram were mainly used for content consumption, but then people slowly shifted their interest to creating content on social media platforms, which allowed users to earn money from their created content.
YouTube, established in 2005, launched its partner program in 2007, allowing content creators to monetize their content through ads. Companies also started reaching out to content creators for sponsorships, which created various income streams for the creators.
YouTube created a demand for various freelance professionals like video editors, digital marketers, scriptwriters, voice artists, and more, as creators were having problems handling their channels alone. People started working for YouTube creators who needed their expertise and experience, and now some of them are working full-time under the YouTube creators.
TikTok, which was launched in 2016 by ByteDance, also allowed its users to earn money by creating content on their platform, but after the ban of TikTok in several countries, including India, Instagram launched its reel feature, which allowed their users to create short-form content on Instagram.
Due to the rise of social media platforms, everyone’s second choice is to become a content creator for their respective social media platforms. According to a consumer trends report from HubSpot in 2022, 30% of surveyed youngsters aged between 18 to 24 years and 40% of people aged between 25 to 34 years consider themselves as content creators. This shows the increased popularity of content creation among youth.
Remote Work Pros and Cons
Pros
According to the report from Buffer, Remote OK, and Nomad List on remote work, the biggest benefits of working remotely are:
- 22% of remote workers are flexible in managing their time.
- 19% of workers are flexible in choosing where they want to live.
- 13% of workers are flexible in choosing where they want to work.
- 12% of workers have extra time as they don’t have to commute.
- 11% of workers believe that it is financially better for them to work online.
- 8% of workers said they can focus on their work while working from home.
- 7% said that they prefer to work in their personal space.
- 4% feel flexible in choosing their career.
- 3% of workers feel safe while working online.
Cons
According to the same report the struggles faced by remote workers are:
- 21% of workers believe that they are staying at home too often.
- 15% of workers feel alone.
- 14% of workers find it difficult to work across different time zones.
- 11% of workers find it difficult to disconnect from their work.
- 11% of workers find it hard to stay motivated.
- 9% feel overworked.
- 9% of workers said that they can’t focus on their work properly.
- 8% find it difficult to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues.
- and 2% have other specific problems with which they struggle.
The Rise of Remote Work in 2020
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, there was a sudden change in working modes. According to Wikipedia, a study conducted in 2020 states that 93% of workers living in countries were stopped or were limited from going to their offices as their workplaces were closed due to the pandemic.
States in % of workers in different countries working remotely in 2020 (from highest to lowest)
| Countries | Workers in % |
| Finland: | 25.1% |
| Luxembourg: | 23.1% |
| Ireland: | 21.5% |
| Austria: | 18.1% |
| Netherlands: | 17.8% |
| Bulgaria: | 1.2% |
| Romania: | 2.5% |
| Croatia: | 3.1% |
| Hungary: | 3.6% |
| Latvia: | 4.5% |
Governments around the world encouraged the people of their countries to work from their homes, while only the specific and necessary government workplaces were open to the general public.
Many companies around the world adopted the mode of working from home, despite the fact that 57% of workers had rarely or never worked from their homes before the pandemic.
Due to this shift and increased popularity, many workers prefer to work from their homes, and due to this increased popularity, 57% of workers would consider leaving their current jobs if their employer or company stopped the remote or work-from-home working mode and 65% of workers want to work remotely all the time (source: Forbes Advisor).
Summary
This article shows the rise and demand for remote jobs among the youth who want to work from their comfort or have settled a habit of working online. Overall, the rise of remote jobs has a major impact on the preferences of current youth, where a portion of individuals want to work online or hybrid, and part of the population wants to work from their offices.