These 10 States Have the Most Telecommuting Jobs

May 10, 2016

If you have dreams of quitting your job, getting a telecommuting gig, and pulling up stakes to move to a remote cabin (albeit one with good Wifi), don’t call the moving van just yet: work-from-home gigs are on the rise, but many of them have a location requirement – about 95 percent of telecommuting listings at FlexJobs are restricted to workers in certain states, according to the site. So, where you live can indeed affect your job options, even if you’re limiting your search to work-from-home opportunities.

pennsylvania

(Photo Credit: Newport, Pennsylvania, by Chris Liu-Beers/Unsplash)

First things first, though: why would a company care where you live, if they’re hiring a remote workforce? There are several reasons, including:

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Education and training. The job might require a good deal of training on an ongoing basis, which is performed at a central location. If you live close to the training center, the employer doesn’t have to shell out to fly you in.
Jobs that are not 100 percent telecommute-only. Some companies want even telecommuters to appear at regular company meetings or to meet clients at the corporate offices. Again, that’s easy and cheaper if you’re around the corner than across the country.
Tax or legal purposes. “As a general rule, if you work from home, you are required to pay state taxes in the state where you reside and work, not the state where your company has its headquarters,” writes Chloe Della Costa at Cheatsheet. “However, certain states have rules that effectively require home-based workers to pay taxes twice on the same income.” To keep things simple, it’s sometimes easier for employers and employees if the workers telecommute from the state in which their employer is located.

Not all companies hire exclusively in-state telecommuters. (Here’s a directory of those employers that hire workers who live anywhere in the U.S., for example.) But if you’re looking for a telecommuting gig, you’ll probably have an easier time if you live in one of these states, which had the most telecommuting jobs last year, according to FlexJobs:

1. California

Sample Employers: SAP, Groupon

2. Texas

Sample Employers: UnitedHealth Group, Ford Motor Company

3. New York

Sample Employers: Salesforce, Kaplan

4. Florida

Sample Employers: Aetna, Sodexo

5. Illinois

Sample Employers: Xerox, Cisco

6. Pennsylvania

Sample Employers: Cigna, IBM