Professionals seeking high-paying jobs will most likely be able to permanently work remotely, even in finance, according to Ladders.

New research by the career site that lists employment opportunities with annual salaries of $100,000 and up found nearly 20% of all professional jobs are now remote. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s data scientists began keeping track of remote work data from North America’s largest 50,000 employers, extending beyond companies with listings on its site. Just 4% of high-paying jobs were available remotely prior to the pandemic. By the end of 2020, it increased to 9%, the researchers found. 

In Q3 of 2021, it jumped to 15% and then rose to 18% in Q4. “There’s a little over 100 million white-collar professional jobs in America,” Ladders CEO Marc Cenedella told me. “With a 3% increase, that’s about 3 million jobs.” And “once you’re hiring somebody remote, you’re permanently changing that job to be remote,” Cenedella says.

Courtesy of Ladders

Ladders also examined the data by industry. “The finance [industry] was slightly less remote, compared to every other industry prior to COVID,” Cenedella explains. In Q1 of 2020, about 1.57% of positions were remote, compared to about 3% overall, he says. In Q4, it was an average of 18%. The industry has gone from being slightly underrepresented in terms of remote jobs “to being in line with everybody else,” Cenedella says. 

When looking at jobs in the finance field like, “accounting, auditing, corporate finance, risk or tax—in any industry—only about 13% of them are currently remote,” he says. “So, that’s a little under indexed compared to overall.” But in Q3, the remote job percentage was 10.5% and about 9% in Q2, Cenedella says. 

For some parts of the business world, like Wall Street, working remotely wasn’t the norm. But, during the pandemic, many traders, investment bankers, and analysts managed to do much of their work offsite. Many firms vowed to return in person once vaccines were widely available. However, Omicron has meant yet another pivot to remote work for Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America. Although, JPMorgan made clear in a memo that employees are expected to return to office no later than Feb. 1, and long-term plans of working in the office will not change, Fortune reported.

I asked Cenedella what he’d say to employers who have reservations about working offsite. “There is no doubt that remote work is the trend of the future,” he says. It can be difficult for executives who have built a successful career working in-person to contemplate that the workplace is going to be remote, Cenedella told me. “All of their skills, tricks, habits, management tools are predicated on an in-person environment,” he says. It can be “frightening and intimidating” to manage people and their career remotely, Cenedella says.

But, when it comes to remote work, the train has already left the station. “We’ve already done the experiment, and it’s come back a huge success,” he says.

See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Big deal

The 2022 Employee Wellness Industry Trends Report released by Wellable, a company wellness platform, analyzes trends in employer benefit investment and also includes special sections dedicated to burnout, mental health, and financial wellness. A survey of almost 200 respondents found a lack the money and people power needed to combat burnout effectively is a persistent issue. The primary barrier for companies in mitigating burnout is a lack of budget (64%), which poses a more significant concern for smaller companies. More than half (55%) of businesses surveyed feel constrained by limited internal resources, which is a problem for 69% of large companies, according to the report. 

Courtesy of Wellable Labs

Going deeper

A new report by Fortune, Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe—and threatening the future of crypto, takes a look at why a long list of nations are banishing the industry. "The trend is especially bad news for enthusiasts who predict that the Bitcoin industry will soon solve its pollution problem by running mainly on renewable energy," writes Shawn Tully. "In a new twist, Scandinavian nations are claiming that they can’t meet clean energy goals if crypto is hogging such a huge and growing share of their wind, energy, and geothermal resources."

Leaderboard

Lisa Banks was named CFO at SpotOn, a software and payments provider. Banks brings more than 20 years of finance and accounting experience. She most recently served as SVP of finance at ServiceNow, Inc. Banks has also held finance roles at technology and financial service providers, including Cisco, MarketWatch and Ernst & Young. Banks' appointment, along with the appointments of JiNa Han as chief people officer and Mark Brodahl as chief revenue officer, follows more than 100% year-over-year growth in 2021, and $425M in new funding at a valuation of $3.15B, according to SpotOn.

Christopher (Chris) Halpin was named CFO at IAC, a media and internet company with more than 150 brands, (NASDAQ: IAC), effective Jan. 26. Halpin will join IAC from the National Football League (NFL), where he is currently EVP and chief strategy and growth officer. Halpin has spent nearly a decade in leadership roles at the NFL, most recently driving all strategic planning and data and analytics and leading the league's international business. Prior to this role, Halpin served as NFL SVP of consumer products and licensing, in which capacity he oversaw NFL gaming, apparel, hardlines and e-commerce businesses. Before that time, he served as NFL VP of media strategy and business development. Prior to working for the NFL, Halpin was a partner and managing director at Providence Equity Partners. He began his career in the merchant banking department of Goldman Sachs.

Overheard

"We will move on our own path, not a path drawn for us by others."

—Turkey's Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said on Wednesday, after annual inflation rose to a 19-year high of 36% in December, as reported by Reuters.