Sales managers who are nervous about their team working outside of the office can take heart in a recent study that ranks sales representative as the No. 1 job for being best suited to work remotely. In fact, the study from MagnifyMoney shows that 13% of sales representatives already worked from a home office prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The study analyzed a multitude of metrics to determine a job’s suitability for working from home, including earning potential, future growth prospects and how many people in those positions already work from home.
Sales rep was boosted by the metric that measured job growth and opportunities. The study reported an expected job growth of 7.2% for sales representatives from 2018 to 2028. The one metric that sales representatives had a low ranking in was wages. In 2018, the median annual salary was $54,550, placing it in the No. 63 spot for that metric.
MagnifyMoney, a division of LendingTree, provides online personal finance tools for consumers. The company looked at data for 579 occupations from the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rounding out the top five
most suitable jobs for WFH are:
2. Management analysts – The current WFH rate for this occupation is 24% (fifth-place overall for that metric).
3. Computer and information systems managers – The overall ranking for this profession was boosted by wages. In 2018, computer and information systems managers had median annual earnings of $142,530, with a 2.4% growth in wages from 2017 to 2018, resulting in the second-place spot for that metric.
4. Market research analysts and marketing specialists – With a predicted addition of nearly 140,000 jobs by 2028, that’s growth rate of 20% over the decade, that’s a lot of opportunities.
5. Financial managers – This position currently has a low 4% WFH rate, but it was boosted by strong rankings in earning potential (2018 median salary of nearly $128,000) and projected robust growth in the field, with an estimated 105,000 jobs added between 2018 and 2028.
Not surprisingly, the highest-ranking jobs for remote work are ones that rely on technology that is easily accessible at home, namely computers and internet access. Industrial jobs ranked among the lowest, not only for the obvious reason that workers need access to heavy machinery, but because the number of positions are expected to decline in the next decade.
The top-rated WFH job: writer/author. Nearly four in 10 writers (38%) work remotely, somehow besting farmer/rancher (29% WFH rate) and travel agents (also 29% WFH rate).
Editor’s note: We didn’t see the median earnings reported for the writer/author category on the MagnifyMoney chart. Perhaps that’s for the best.
Click on any of the articles below to read more from our “NEXT” special report.
Is working from home inevitable or overrated?
The office as a recruitment tool
Sales reps are ideally suited to work from home
Burnout becomes a bigger fear in WFH environments
Leaders must be mindful of the story behind the story
Building an office culture without the office
Tackling low morale among remote workers
Author
Get our newsletter and digital focus reports
Stay current on learning and development trends, best practices, research, new products and technologies, case studies and much more.
