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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2022
State remains desirable place for remote workers
By JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
In the years before the pandemic, Duncan
Gans would fantasize with his then scattered
college friends about moving together to the
same city.
The idea seemed fanciful. His friends
worked in offi ces across the United States.
And while Gans sometimes worked remotely
and traveled for his job at a public opinion
research fi rm, he still felt pressured to live
in Washington, D.C., where his company is
based.
But when offi ce workers were sent home
en masse in the early days of the pandemic,
Gans began to wonder whether he needed to
remain in the small row house he shared with
eight others to save money in an expensive
rental market. In August 2020, he and four
of his friends from Bowdoin College, a small
liberal arts school in Maine, packed up and
moved across the country to live together in
a house in Bend.
“I work in a space where there was an
assumption that you live in this 30-mile
radius around D.C.,” said Gans, 24. “That
was honestly a big deterrent for me doing
that work, despite it being something I really
care about. Being able to live in a place that
has a lot of outdoor access but still do work
that I really enjoy means a lot.”
Millions of workers across the United
States switched to remote work early in the
pandemic. Nearly two years later, many still
haven’t returned to offi ces, and it’s become
clear some never will.
The newfound freedom to work from any-
where has allowed some to rethink where
they want to live, a trend that could have pro-
found impacts on the economy and lead to a
long-term shift in national migration patterns.
Before the pandemic, only about 6% of
the American workforce worked from home,
according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
A separate Bureau of Labor Statistics sur-
vey found that the number of people working
remotely jumped to 35% in May 2020 before
steadily declining over the next year. An ele-
vated 11% of the U.S. workforce was con-
tinuing to work from home as of November,
according to the survey.
Some large companies have embraced
the shift as a permanent one, saying their
employees will forever have the option to
work remotely and are using those policies
to lure new hires. Some cities and states are
looking to take advantage of the shift, too.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, will pay
remote workers up to $10,000 to move to the
city.
Josh Lehner, an analyst with Oregon’s
Offi ce of Economic Analysis, said it’s too
early to know how prevalent remote work
will be in the long-term and how a spike in
telecommuting could change migration pat-
terns. He said it’s important to note that only
about a third of jobs in the United States can
be done remotely.
However, the longer the pandemic drags
on, he said, the more likely the new work
patterns will stick. Oregon had more people
working from home and better internet access
than most states before the pandemic, Lehner
noted, which could make it a desirable desti-
nation for remote workers in the future.
And while the long-term eff ects are still
unclear, even a small change in the percent-
age of people working remotely could have
far-reaching eff ects.
“This is the equivalent of the internet in
1997,” Lehner said. “We’re years away from
knowing how this is going to work out.”
Duncan Gans works from a coworking space called The Haven in Bend.
It is clear, however, that a move to remote
work during the pandemic has given many
workers more options. Some, like Gans,
are choosing to come to Oregon. Others are
choosing to leave.
Nathan Bergfelt had worked for a small
creative marketing agency in Portland for
several years before the pandemic. The com-
pany had an active offi ce culture that man-
agers believed spurred creativity and col-
laboration. Bergfelt said he couldn’t have
envisioned working remotely.
But that changed when offi ces closed in
March 2020. Bergfelt and his colleagues
soon learned that they could do their jobs
eff ectively while working apart. Even Berg-
felt’s boss is now in the process of buying a
home in Idaho with plans to work remotely at
times from the new house.
Bergfelt’s partner, Sarah Roundtree, was
admitted to Penn State University for a Ph.D.
program in counseling last year. Since July,
Bergfelt has been working remotely perma-
nently from State College, Pennsylvania.
Roundtree’s aspirations in academia
may dictate where the couple will live. But
Bergfelt doesn’t have to give up his Port-
land-based job.
“The most important thing to me is to be
with my partner and my dog, but both me and
my partner also want to feel satisfi ed in our
careers,” said Bergfelt, 27. “Now that I’ve
realized through this that I can be really satis-
fi ed with not necessarily being in the offi ce, I
can be much more fl exible on where her job
takes her.”
Remote work has enabled others to fi nd
a better job without having to uproot their
lives.
Portland resident Sarah Cullerton said she
struggled to fi nd a sustainable work-life bal-
ance in her previous job working in support
operations for software companies.
She didn’t look for new work because
there weren’t many options in her fi eld
locally. But last summer, many more com-
panies were advertising fully remote jobs.
After interviewing with several, she started
a new job in July for a tech fi rm based in San
Francisco.
“All my family and friends and infrastruc-
ture are here,” said Cullerton, 34. “It’s worth
it for me to stay. I don’t think I could ever
move for a job.”
A report from LinkedIn last fall found that
more than 30% of workers who applied to
paid U.S. job postings on LinkedIn in August
2021 were applying for remote work, an indi-
cation that more workers are seeking out fl ex-
ibility in their work setups — and that more
employers are off ering it.
Berrin Erdogan, a Portland State Univer-
sity professor who studies employee behav-
ior, said a tight labor market is forcing busi-
nesses to rethink the benefi ts they provide
employees. Many now expect better com-
pensation, more autonomy and, often, the
fl exibility to work remotely.
Erdogan suspects part- or full-time remote
work, which companies may now see as
novel, will be more widely adopted. And
employees, in turn, may feel more content
at companies that put a greater emphasis on
supporting workers.
“Many companies will need to adapt to
the new reality and may need to rethink how
they are recruiting and retaining employees,”
Erdogan said.
Damon Runberg, the Oregon Employ-
ment Department’s regional economist for
much of central Oregon, said remote work
could benefi t smaller metropolitan areas that
have suffi cient housing for remote workers
and don’t have as many large companies with
big offi ce footprints. However, he said, if
there is a scarcity of housing and not enough
new construction, an infl ux of remote work-
ers could drive up housing prices, already a
challenge for Bend and other state metros.
The LinkedIn report found that applicants
in Bend were more likely to apply for remote
work than applicants from any other city in
the country. Eugene ranked fi fth on the list.
“Yes, people are searching out Bend for
remote work,” Runberg said. “But also, local
people are looking for these remote jobs
because there are a lot of benefi ts there – the
biggest being that remote jobs tend to pay
signifi cantly higher than the average wage
from local employers.”
Gans is among many remote workers who
have sought out Bend.
A year and a half after leaving Washing-
ton, D.C., he now owns a house in Bend and
has no plans to leave. Two of the four friends
he moved with to central Oregon remain in
the city as well. Gans now travels often to
visit friends and family across the country
while working remotely.
When he’s in Bend, he works from a
coworking space called The Haven that over-
looks the Deschutes River. There, he has met
numerous other remote workers, many of
whom came to Bend during the pandemic as
well.
“I think I would be hesitant to ever go
back to a job that needed me in person,”
Gans said. “Working remotely has just made
me realize that the location is more arbitrary
than I thought.”
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