The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented shift towards remote work, with many employees and employers embracing the benefits of working from home. As remote work continues to gain popularity, a new study conducted by The Happy Beavers, an internationally-operating SEO company, has revealed the country that is most interested in this trend. What is special about the study is that interest was measured by how often people search for relevant terms in the country.
The team around SEO specialist Luka Karsten Breitig analysed keyword data from 72 countries that are related to remote work. “Other studies that deal with the topic obtain data mainly through surveys,” Breitig explains. “There are inherent biases in this method.” Other studies examine the availability of remote work, for example by looking at the number of job offers per capita. “But here other problems like labour law play a bigger role. We wanted to understand in which countries people are actually interested in remote work, regardless of whether they have the possibility to work that way.”
The Happy Beavers have put the data obtained in relation to the population size in order to find the relative interest in the population.
Cyprus comes first in the study, followed by Latvia. “We would never have found out with conventional research methods that Saudi Arabia is directly in fourth place among the countries that search for remote work most frequently in the world,” continues study director Breitig.
Remote work offers many benefits, including increased flexibility, improved work-life balance, and reduced commuting time and costs. As more and more countries and companies embrace this trend, it is likely that the number of remote workers will continue to rise. This study is an important building block in understanding this global trend that is here to stay.
