"Remote" still mostly means remote in the US: the Remote1st Remote Work Index, November 2026

6 min readBy The Remote1st team

Remote1st banner: 'Remote' mostly means US-only. 9,908 of 14,640 remote jobs hire in the US only, beside two people working on laptops in a rainy London coffee shop

The first Remote1st Remote Work Index. Baseline edition, built from Remote1st's public job feed as of Saturday 31 October 2026, 06:15 GMT.

The live, updated Remote Work Index, with figures recomputed on 11 November 2026, is at /remote-work-index. The numbers below are the 31 October 2026 baseline and have been left unchanged.

Remote job ads promise freedom of location, but most come with a border attached. We deduplicated every remote job in the Remote1st index (16,992 market listings, which come down to 14,640 unique jobs from 1,186 employers) and asked three questions: who can apply, which ads show pay, and what that pay is.

Key findings

  • Two in three remote jobs are open to US residents only: 9,908 of 14,640 (67.7%). Just 4,245 (29.0%) can hire someone in the UK or the EU.
  • "Work from anywhere" is rare. Only 119 jobs (0.8%) give a worldwide, global or "anywhere" location. 89.0% are listed for a single country.
  • US remote ads show pay twice as often as UK and EU ads. 58.9% of US remote ads state a salary (n=11,227), against 26.7% in the UK (n=2,408) and 22.2% in the EU (n=2,176).
  • UK-open remote roles quote pay in dollars more than pounds. Among salaried roles open to UK residents, 204 give the range in USD and 89 in GBP.
  • Canada's remote market is mostly an extension of the US one. Of 1,124 remote jobs open to Canadians, 1,065 (94.8%) are also open to US residents, and only 26 are Canada-only.

1. Where remote jobs can hire

A job open to more than one market is counted in each.

MarketRemote jobs open to itShare of all 14,640 jobsOpen to that market only
United States11,22776.7%9,908
United Kingdom2,40816.4%1,327
EU (27 states)2,17614.9%1,722
Canada1,1247.7%26
Switzerland and Norway570.4%46

Within the EU, the largest markets are Germany (490 jobs), Spain (305), France (236), Poland (189), Ireland (156), Bulgaria (90), Austria (87) and Sweden (76).

Bar chart of remote jobs open to each market. The United States has 11,227, the United Kingdom 2,408, the EU 2,176 and Canada 1,124. The largest EU countries shown are Germany 490, Spain 305, France 236, Poland 189, Ireland 156, Bulgaria 90, Austria 87 and Sweden 76.

2. Remote, but restricted

We grouped each job by the set of markets it is listed in:

Who can applyJobsShare
US only9,90867.7%
EU or wider Europe only1,76812.1%
UK only1,3279.1%
US + Canada + UK5543.8%
US + Canada4613.1%
Other combinations3372.3%
UK + Europe2591.8%
Canada only260.2%

Bar chart of who can apply to 14,640 remote jobs. US only is 67.7% (9,908 jobs), EU or wider Europe only 12.1% (1,768), UK only 9.1% (1,327), US plus Canada plus UK 3.8% (554), US plus Canada 3.1% (461), other combinations 2.3% (337), UK plus Europe 1.8% (259) and Canada only 0.2% (26).

Only 119 jobs (0.8%) carry a worldwide-type location such as "Global" or "Worldwide". Counting ads whose text says something like "anywhere in the world" or "we hire globally" as well brings it to 157 (1.1%). Separately, 1,763 ads (12.0%) spell out a location or work-authorisation requirement in the text, for example "must be located in" or "authorised to work in".

3. Who shows pay

Share of remote ads that state a salary, by market. "Anywhere in the ad" means the structured salary field, or a currency amount within 100 characters of a pay word such as salary, compensation or OTE.

MarketAds (n)Pay anywhere in the adStructured salary field
US11,22758.9%37.9%
Canada1,12456.2%31.6%
UK2,40826.7%14.2%
EU2,17622.2%13.5%

Bar chart of the share of remote ads that state a salary. US: 58.9% anywhere in the ad and 37.9% in the structured salary field (n=11,227). Canada: 56.2% and 31.6% (n=1,124). UK: 26.7% and 14.2% (n=2,408). EU: 22.2% and 13.5% (n=2,176).

The gap holds after collapsing repeat postings of the same role: 61.1% of distinct US roles show pay, against 29.4% in the UK and 18.6% in the EU.

EU member states had until 7 June 2026 to bring the EU Pay Transparency Directive into national law. Among EU countries with at least 30 remote ads, pay disclosure ranges from 38.2% in Italy (n=55) and 33.8% in the Netherlands (n=68) down to 10.5% in Sweden (n=76), 7.5% in Hungary (n=67) and 6.2% in Czechia (n=48). The largest EU market, Germany, sits at 20.8% (n=490). These country samples are small, so treat them as directional.

4. What remote roles advertise

The figures below are medians of the advertised range midpoint, annual and before tax. n is the number of distinct salaried roles (one employer and one job title), so a role re-posted city by city counts once. We only show cells with n≥30.

Market (currency)n rolesEmployersMedianMiddle 50%
US (USD)3,694466$177,500$132,000–$225,000
Open to Canada (USD)29674$188,450$120,000–$230,000
Open to UK (USD)20470$170,000$114,262–$220,000
Open to UK (GBP)8935£104,000£71,000–£130,000
Open to EU (EUR)10134€102,500€75,000–€121,500

US remote roles by function (USD, n≥30): Security $220,000 (n=59); Product $212,500 (n=177); AI / Machine Learning $205,000 (n=164); Engineering $200,250 (n=872); Legal / Compliance $200,000 (n=109); Sales / Business Development $170,000 (n=400); Operations $160,000 (n=193); Finance / Admin $144,801 (n=174); Data $132,250 (n=132); Customer Success $131,500 (n=119).

Chart of median advertised US remote salaries by function, in US dollars per year. Security is the highest labelled median at $220,000 (n=59). Each bar is the middle 50% of advertised range midpoints, and only functions with at least 30 distinct salaried roles are shown.

Canada-currency pay is too thin to report: only 26 Canada-open roles quote CAD. Of the UK and EU cells, EUR is the most concentrated: one employer accounts for 26.7% of it.

5. What is being hired

Top 15 categories (unique jobs): Engineering 3,364 (23.0%); Other Professional 2,697; Sales / Business Development 1,639; Solutions / Technical Support 803; AI / Machine Learning 676; Operations 623; Product 605; Finance / Admin 546; Customer Success 498; Data 454; Growth / Marketing 379; DevOps / Infrastructure 361; Legal / Compliance 307; Content / Writing 299; HR / People 274.

Most common job titles, ranked by the number of employers hiring for them: Senior Software Engineer (91 employers); Account Executive (82); Software Engineer (75); Enterprise Account Executive (75); Staff Software Engineer (48); Senior Product Manager (43); Product Manager (42); Engineering Manager (42); Business Development Representative (39); Sales Development Representative (38); Forward Deployed Engineer (34); Account Manager (31); Senior Account Executive (29); Data Scientist (27); Senior Backend Engineer (26).

6. Who is hiring remotely

These are ranked by distinct remote roles, with the number of listings in brackets.

  • Overall: AlphaHire 147 (164); Veeva Systems 132 (573); GitLab 125 (154); ServiceNow 116 (185); Harvey 105 (162); Affirm 90 (150); Plaid 87 (116); AlphaSense 81 (90); Prosidian Consulting 81 (81); Coinbase 80 (96).
  • UK: ElevenLabs 49 (77); Lendable 45 (51); GitLab 37 (45); Preply 35 (49); Veeva Systems 30 (50).
  • EU: Veeva Systems 65 (178); Preply 40 (50); GitLab 39 (51); ElevenLabs 36 (54); Neko Health 31 (33).
  • Canada: GitLab 51 (52); Mercury 40 (54); Cohere 38 (38); Alpaca 26 (35); Garner Health 23 (29).

7. Freshness

Of the 14,640 jobs, 1,230 (8.4%) were added to the Remote1st index in the 7 days to 31 October and 14,081 (96.2%) in the last 30 days. These are first-indexed dates, not the employer's original posting date. Most jobs (12,485) carry dates from 19 to 24 October, which reflects indexing runs rather than a hiring surge.

Method

  • Source. Remote1st's public job feeds (/feeds/jobs.xml.gz and /feeds/jobs.json.gz), built 31 October 2026 at 06:15 GMT. The /feeds/adzuna.xml.gz feed was used as a cross-check. Remote1st aggregates remote jobs from employers' public job boards and other sources. We did not survey employers.
  • Deduplication. One job is one Remote1st job URL: 16,992 market listings became 14,640 jobs. For salaries, pay disclosure robustness and company rankings, we also collapsed jobs to distinct roles (employer plus normalised title), giving 11,020 roles.
  • Markets. These come from the country each listing is tagged with. EU means the 27 member states; Switzerland and Norway are reported separately.
  • Salaries. We used the midpoint of the advertised minimum and maximum. All structured salaries in the feed are annual. Currencies are never converted or mixed.
  • Pay shown. The structured salary field, or the text test described in section 3.
  • Worldwide. A location field naming Worldwide, Global, International or Anywhere (but not "Anywhere in [country]"), plus explicit text phrases.

Limitations

  • This is a single snapshot, so it is a baseline. Month-on-month comparisons start with the December edition.
  • The index covers the employers whose job boards Remote1st indexes, not every remote job, and it leans toward tech and US employers.
  • Salaries are advertised ranges, not pay received. UK and EU salary samples are small (89 GBP and 101 EUR roles).
  • Market tags reflect where Remote1st lists a job, which can be broader or narrower than the employer's own wording.
  • Text-based measures are keyword tests and will miss some cases.

Cite this data

Source: Remote1st Remote Work Index, November 2026, https://www.remote1stjobs.com. The charts and tables are free to reuse with a link to https://www.remote1stjobs.com.

The Remote1st team

Search live remote jobs by where you can work, or see new roles as soon as they are listed with Remote1st Pro.

Get jobs like this by email

One free weekly email. Unsubscribe anytime. — The Remote1st team