Telecommuting has risen sharply over the past 20 years, with 37 percent of workers in 2015 reporting that they’ve worked from home at some point, according to Gallup. That’s up from 30 percent in 2005 and 9 percent in 1995. It’s not hard to guess why more workers are able to telecommute these days: technology. It’s easier to work from home when you have access to the same tools you’d use in an office anyway.
Of course, work-from-home jobs aren’t equally accessible to all workers. Certain occupations — Customer Service Representative, for example, or Case Manager — lend themselves to telecommuting more than others. If you don’t have one of these jobs, you might think that you’re out of luck.
Not so. FlexJobs, a job search site for telecommuting, part-time, and other flexible work, recently compiled a list of the fastest growing remote job categories in their database. To qualify, listings had to specify remote work on at least a part-time basis. The fastest growing categories all increased by 20 percent or more:
Mortgage and Real Estate
Common Remote Job Titles: Mortgage Loan Officer, Underwriter
HR and Recruiting
Common Job Titles: Human Resources Specialist, Human Resources Manager
Accounting and Finance
Common Job Titles: Accountant, Bookkeeper
Pharmaceutical
Common Job Titles: Pharmacist, Clinical Research Associate
Education and Training
Common Job Titles: Online Tutor, Virtual Teacher
“Given the overall benefits of telecommuting to both employees and employers, we’re not surprised to see remote job opportunities growing across industries, even those that haven’t been historically associated with remote work,” said Sara Sutton Fell, CEO and founder of FlexJobs.
Sutton Fell also noted that 65 percent of workers said that they’d be more productive working at home than in a traditional workplace.
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