And even among the well-paid, white, knowledge-economy workers that make up the majority of teleworkers, the only people who could truly become digital nomads – who maybe live in a far-flung locale and then come into the office once or twice a quarter – are senior-level executives, explains Susan Lund, a partner at Washington, DC-based McKinsey & Company who researches labour, economic development and remote work.
Companies will be more willing to accommodate the powerful, high-earning top brass, she says. That may depend on the situation, though – Litchfield and Woldoff say they interviewed more junior workers for their book who were surprised to get retention offers from their bosses when they said they’d quit if they couldn’t work remotely long term.
Still, digital nomadism aside, Lund says that based on McKinsey research, “60-70% of the workforce has zero opportunity” to work remotely at all. Most people are “cutting hair, they’re caring for patients, they’re in a manufacturing setting where you’re working machinery or in a laboratory working with specialised equipment”.
“Definitely, there is an issue of equity,” says Lund. “It is college-educated, office-based, white-collar workers predominately that can do this.”
The more realistic outcome
Experts say that some industries definitely will have more digital nomads among their staff after the pandemic. But they add that a huge shift towards digital nomadism across the board probably won’t happen.
A more likely outcome is that more workers might end up in situations where their organisations implement a hybrid work schedule that forces them to come into the office at least sometimes, and workers might relocate based on that requirement. If people do want to relocate, Lund believes it’ll just be a bit further away from the office, but still in commuting distance. “I think there is this [trend of people] spreading out to smaller towns and rural areas – but still not, ‘I want to go to Croatia’ or ‘I want to live in Aspen’,” she says.
Even if the number of people who can live indefinitely in a Lisbon Airbnb for months on end increases after the pandemic, the privilege to do so still remains only with tiny group.
Overall, says Kelly, “I would say 100% remote work is a possibility for some employees, and maybe feasible in some industries, but it’s not going to become the new normal.”
