The Global Market for Remote White-Collar Jobs

41 Pages Posted: 9 Sep 2024

See all articles by Jingyi Cui

Jingyi Cui

Yale University - Department of Economics

Samuel Solomon

Yale University - Department of Economics

Date Written: June 25, 2024

Abstract

The rise of remote work connects workers and firms across countries. We study the location preferences, wage patterns, and surplus created by cross-country remote hiring using a novel data set of over 200,000 international, remote, and predominantly white-collar workers from 195 countries working for more than 20,000 firms. We document that richer countries hire and supply more remote workers compared to poorer countries. Moreover, sharing a common language is associated with greater cross-country work contracts. We observe a narrower cross-country wage gap in international remote hiring compared to traditional domestic hiring and attribute around one third of the remaining wage gap between workers from high-income and non-high-income countries to differential sorting into firms. Finally, we quantify the surplus gained from cross-country remote hiring, showing that both the firms and workers involved benefit substantially.

Suggested Citation

Cui, Jingyi and Solomon, Samuel, The Global Market for Remote White-Collar Jobs (June 25, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4942498 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4942498

Jingyi Cui

Yale University - Department of Economics ( email )

28 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT 06520-8268
United States

Samuel Solomon (Contact Author)

Yale University - Department of Economics ( email )

28 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT 06520-8268
United States

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