What the OEWS Tells Us About Remote Work Wages

For most of labor market history, where you worked determined what you were paid. High-cost metropolitan areas like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle paid premiums reflecting local labor markets and cost of living. The remote work surge of 2020–2023 complicated this relationship.

Location-Based Pay vs. Market-Rate Pay

Large employers have taken divergent approaches to remote worker pay. Some adopted "pay by location" policies, adjusting salaries based on where the remote worker lives. Others moved to "national rate" or "market rate" pay, using metro-area wages as a baseline regardless of where the worker is located. OEWS captures wages reported by employers to their survey and may not fully reflect the geographic dispersion of remote work.

What the Data Shows

OEWS metro-area data continues to show wage premiums in high-cost metros for knowledge work occupations like software development. Whether these premiums reflect the location of the employer's office or the worker's residence is unclear. As remote work stabilizes at a new equilibrium, future OEWS editions will provide cleaner data on whether geographic wage premiums have compressed.

Compare wages across areas at our wages section.