It's getting harder to find a 6-figure job that's hybrid or remote

• High-paying hybrid and remote jobs are getting harder to come by, a new report says.
• Listings for hybrid and remote jobs paying $100,000 or more fell 69% and 12% in Q4 from Q3, per careers site Ladders.
• At the same time, availability for high-paying in-person roles rose 93%, Ladders' report found.

You might have to look a little harder these days for high-paying jobs that don't require you to go into the office.

Listings for hybrid jobs paying $100,000 or more plummeted 69% in the last quarter of 2023 from the quarter prior, according to a report published Monday by Ladders, a careers site for high-paying jobs. The company looked at almost half a million job openings listed on its site from October through December for the report. For high-paying fully remote jobs, availability fell 12% quarter-over-quarter.

Meanwhile, in-person job availability ballooned 93%, the report found.

"Jobs that pay $200,000 or more really drove the increase for in-person roles," John Mullinix, Ladder's director of growth marketing, wrote in the report. "Companies want their highest earners in the office for collaboration and leadership."

The changes build on trends also observed in Ladders' quarterly report for Q3, when in-person-job availability grew steadily while hybrid job listings fell slightly near the end of the quarter and remote job opportunities saw little flux.

"Companies that did not necessarily want their employees to go remote and just had to are leaning more towards the in-office jobs now," Mullinix told BI. "That's partly aspirational from the top down, where the change is coming from the executive level and the upper management level to push employees back into the office because they believe productivity and performance are down. But in reality, most studies indicate that's not actually true."

The changes Ladders observed in 2023 in where employees are expected to work could understandably affect hiring, retention, and pay prospects continuing into this year.

"What might happen is bigger companies with higher budgets for payroll might take away some of that work flexibility as far as hybrid and remote because they can, and to get employees, we might see them offer higher salaries instead for decreased flexibility," Mullinix said. "We might see smaller companies that are more nimble for certain industries use flexibility as a bargaining chip to get higher-level talent that they wouldn't normally be able to afford."