LinkedIn data puts Wilmington on the map as a ‘remote work haven’

Here’s the latest gem spotted on r/WilmingtonDE.

New data from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team shows that 35.9% of job applications from Wilmington through LinkedIn job postings are for remote work, making it the U.S. small city with third-highest rate of remote work job seekers. The small cities where people are most likely to apply for remote work are Bend, Oregon (41.8%) and Asheville, North Carolina (38.7%).

The overall national rate for remote-job applications on LinkedIn during the same span was 21.3%.

The data shows that remote work opportunities as of August 2021 drew 30.2% of all applications to paid U.S. job postings on LinkedIn — about triple the rate of 9.8% in August 2020 — backing up the growing evidence that remote work continues to be a popular work option as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. That percentage was just 2.8% in pre-COVID January 2020, per LinkedIn, or tenfold growth.

Of the 10 small cities and 10 large metros that make up the top 20 “remote work havens,” six are in Florida, seven are in other southern states, two are in Oregon, two are in “heartland” states of Utah and Nebraska, with Wilmington, Las Vegas and Portland, Maine rounding things out.

The remote work havens tend to be places near nature, especially mountains or beaches, and have a lower-than-average cost of living. In Delaware, the remote roles people are applying for include legal work, content marketing, IT/technical, medical billing, data analysis and online instruction.

New York City and San Francisco (both 16.4%) are the cities with the lowest number of remote work applicants.