Remote Workers Are Happier and Stay in Their Jobs Longer

Nowadays, to work remotely all you need is a computer and an internet connection (hello, coffee shops). According to a new study, employees who can work from anywhere are generally happier than those who work onsite in an office.

On September 24, video conferencing company Owl Labs released their State of Remote Work 2019 report. They surveyed 1202 full-time U.S. workers from the ages of 22 to 65, and discovered that 62 percent of respondents worked remotely at least some of the time and 38 percent worked onsite. Of the remote workers, 49 percent worked remotely full-time.

As it turns out, working remotely—or the idea of it—makes people happy. Eighty-three percent of survey respondents “agree that the ability to work remotely would make them happier,” and 71 percent of workers who do get to work remotely said their job makes them happy, compared with 55 percent of office-only workers.

One reason remote workers might be happier is that they were more than twice as likely to earn more than $100,000 per year. Loyalty is another factor: Remote workers are 13 percent more likely than non-remote workers to stay with their current gig for the next five years—making remote work a win-win for employees and employers alike.