12 Ways the World Will Change When Everyone Works Remotely

Kristin Wilson
The Startup
Published in
13 min readNov 26, 2019

--

Workplace studies in 2019 have reached a common conclusion — remote work is here to stay. Once people try working remotely, up to 99% want to continue, while 95% would recommend the practice to others.

But that’s not all.

A Zapier survey revealed that 74% of workers would quit their jobs for the ability to work from anywhere. Two in three believe that the traditional workplace will be obsolete within the next decade.

Source: Buffer State of Remote Work Report

They’re right.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people working remotely has been rising for the past ten years. Meanwhile, UpWork projects that the majority of the workforce will be freelancing as soon as 2027. Globally, one billion people could be working in a remote capacity by 2035.

Whether people become remote employees, online entrepreneurs, freelancers, or other gig workers — one thing’s for sure — life will be nothing like the current 9–5. The world will change and reflect this new reality.

A force to reckon with

Once the number of remote workers reaches a critical mass, we will be hugely influential when it comes to topics such as immigration, economic and tax policy, zoning and city planning, geopolitics, and more. We will see sweeping changes in consumer behaviour and disruption across industries.

New products and services catering to the digital workforce will flood the market. People who work remotely will have near-complete autonomy over their daily lives — potentially for the first time.

After more than a decade of working from home or while travelling, here are twelve ways I think life will change when remote work becomes “work”:

1. We will see a brain drain away from cities for the first time in generations

Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

--

--

Kristin Wilson
The Startup

Author of Digital Nomads for Dummies. Host of Badass Digital Nomads Podcast and https://www.YouTube.com/TravelingwithKristin