When Work From Home Means Work for Less

○ American businesses are recruiting remote employees in lower-cost cities

- Cristina Lindblad

For all the high-profile bosses who’ve ordered staff back to the office, plenty of US businesses are still embracing work from home, partly because it means they can hire workers where they’re more affordable.

At Extra Space Storage, near Salt Lake City, which has one of the tightest job markets in the country, managers were struggling to staff a call center last year. The company, which owns or operates more than 2,000 self-storage centers in 42 states, was increasing pay, but workers still kept departing, says Tyler Jacobsen, senior director of talent acquisition and retention.

The solution turned out to be hiring from anywhere. Extra Space has added 255 customer service agents this year, more than double the number in 2020, but the majority work from home. They were offered the same wages as the in-person staff in Utah, but bringing in remote workers from lower-wage states has helped the business “keep our costs neutral,” Jacobsen says. “We were at a point where we were really struggling to get people in place,” he says. Now there’s an “overabundance” of applicants.

Much of the buzz around the remote work revolution has been about how it’s empowered workers, such as the professionals who fled New York or San Francisco during the pandemic for more moderately priced locales without having to sacrifice their big-city salaries. But in a time of soaring wages—and steep pay gaps between regions— some employers are flipping the script. They’re willing to take on more WFH staff but are targeting small-town labor markets where wages are lower, in Florida, Idaho, Texas and other states, according to recruiting companies and human resources consulting firms.