Marc Cenedella, CEO & Founder of Ladders Inc., joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the leap in high paying remote jobs.

Video Transcript

- Well, if you enjoy this work-from-home life and want to continue, you're definitely going to want to stay tuned to this conversation because you can still earn a high wage even if you are working remotely. We're joined now by Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of Ladders, Inc. Marc, great to have you here with us. So let's just start off with--

MARC CENEDELLA: Great to be here.

- --what the highest-paying remote jobs are right now and just how high is a high-paying job.

MARC CENEDELLA: Well, we looked at jobs paying over 100 grand. And we're seeing across the country, across industries, across roles that remote work is booming. We saw 1,000% increase from last March till July of 2021 in the number of open high-paying jobs at the 100K-plus level.

- So that's definitely great for some of those people out there who do still want to make a great living but also work from home. What sectors right now have the most remote work?

MARC CENEDELLA: So it's all the way across the board. And if you look at the history of remote work, what typically happened let's go five years ago, technology had a number of open roles in the 100K-plus sector. Because they're familiar with the technology tools, they're able to adapt to them probably first among all of us. That had happened. And salespeople historically have often been remote working from home or in the field.

The surprising thing when we looked at the data over the last 16 months is that it's-- obviously all of us have been working remote this last year and a half a lot more than we had previously. But what we're seeing in job openings is that the trend is happening across every sector and that it's actually picking up steam this summer versus what some people expected, hey, we'll be headed back to the office.

So as an example, we saw in marketing over 900% increase, July of 2001 versus March of 2020, over 900% increase in the percentage of high-paying marketing jobs that are remote. Accounting and finance, something that you would typically think is really something companies want to have happen at headquarters where they can keep their tabs on the numbers, we saw 600% increase. So it's really all the way across the board we're seeing the remote work revolution continuing even as we see the pandemic perhaps fading.

- Marc, that revolution that you refer to, are you seeing that happen across all age groups and across all regions of the country?

MARC CENEDELLA: Well, the way we look at it is from job openings, not particularly from the age of folks applying to those jobs. So we're seeing it across all different geographies, all different sectors. And the interesting thing is that in the last few months, again, when you might have expected that to slow down, we're seeing the trend continue. We're seeing 20% growth month over month over month in the number of high-paying jobs that are listed as remote as the location.

- I do want to ask because you focus on some of those higher-paying jobs, jobs over $100,000 over at Ladders, I'm curious to know if you are seeing even more employers really listing their jobs in the six figures. We've been seeing this labor market really continue to tighten.

We've talked to a lot of job and business owners that have said frankly that they need to start-- they need to start offering much higher salaries and wages to their employees in order to get some folks to come back to the office. Are you also seeing that as well in some of your listings and perhaps even other extra perks like bonuses, sign-on bonuses, relocation fees? What are you seeing from employers on the site?

MARC CENEDELLA: We're seeing extraordinarily high demand for these jobs 100K-plus. Ends up being about 25% of the US workforce makes 100 grand a year or more. So we're seeing extraordinarily high demand all the way across the board. And employers have not quite yet moved to the crazy perk stage of a hot employment market.

If we go back in time a little bit, January 2020-- we were in the hottest employment market in the history of our country, the best numbers that we'd-- that we'd ever seen. We are not quite back to that yet, but we are much closer to it than we really had reason to expect to be.

So last January, if we look at college educated, unemployment rate was about 1.9%. At the worst of the pandemic, it got to a little over 8%. And today, we're sitting a little bit north of 3% so not quite back to that 1.9% yet but certainly a lot lower than where we had been or even had reason to believe as recently as six months ago, that the speed of this turnaround is really surprising.

So the anecdotes you're hearing more in the hourly market about rapid gaps in pay levels-- we're not quite seeing that yet at the 100K-plus level. But if this demand continues, I'll expect we'll see it in the next three to four months.

- Marc, were you surprised by any of the data that you guys are collecting about a particular industry that has maybe had to embrace remote in a way it didn't prepandemic.

MARC CENEDELLA: Accounting and finance is-- is the surprise. You know, that segment had been resistant in many ways to remote work. It's hey, we're doing the numbers. We're putting together the budget for the company. We're doing the forecast. We've got to work together on this. That was kind of the prototypical HQ activity where we're going to keep track of the money and guess where the-- forecast where the money is going to be.

So to see that function now be so open to remote and see so many job listings in that sector, again, over 600%, it's-- it's a surprise. And I think it's a signal that this remote work is really here to stay. If you look back over the last year, we are forced into this unfortunate experiment. Can we be productive when we work remotely? And the answer's come back a resounding yes. We decided kind of as a country, as a globe, you know, we can be pretty productive working remotely.

Now we're asking the question, do we want to work remotely? The vaccines are coming in. Pandemic might be easing off a bit. Do we want to work remotely? And what we're seeing from the job listings is it's an absolute yes. Companies want to work remote. Employees want to work remote. And so that revolution is-- it's really-- it's the largest change in work behavior and work-- workplace practices that we've seen since World War II and the rise of the American suburbs.

- All right. We're going to have to leave that there. Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of Ladders, Inc. Thanks so much for joining us today.