For many, remote work is the holy grail. Doing work you like from the comfort of your own home. No commutes, no cubicles, and no massive fuel costs. This week, we dive into the status of remote work.

“In a remote company, productivity isn’t measured by hours at a desk but by the impact of the work produced.”

Experience is the credential that unlocks flexibility.

The headlines say we’re all back in the office. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says otherwise. Here's what the data actually shows and how you can still find real opportunity in a market that keeps moving the goalposts.

You've been reading the headlines. Amazon. JP Morgan. The White House. Every few weeks another corporate titan announces a triumphant return to the office, usually delivered with the kind of performative gravity reserved for moon landings and peace treaties. The subtext is always the same: remote work had a nice run, now act like a grown-up and commute.

Don't believe it. Or at least, don't believe all of it.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Stanford's ongoing Work from Home Research initiative, FlexJobs, and Robert Half, tells a considerably more nuanced story. Remote and hybrid work haven't been dismantled. They've been sorted. And if you're an experienced professional with a decade-plus of results behind you, that sorting is, quietly, working in your favor.

In truth, fully remote jobs are not abundant.

In Q1 2026, only 4% of new U.S. job postings were fully remote, with 19% hybrid and a commanding 77% fully on-site. If you've been searching with the single filter of "work from home," and wondering why the pickings are thin, that's your answer. The fully remote category has compressed and it's now fiercely competitive.

But zoom out a little, and the picture changes. Some 22.6% of U.S. employees worked remotely at least partially as of March 2026. That's one in every four workers. The remote work rate in the U.S. sat at 22.1% in August 2025, a figure that has held between 17.9% and 23.8% since October 2022, barely budging for three straight years, despite the RTO drumbeat.

The real story is that remote work didn't disappear, it just stratified. The executives who get to keep their Zoom-from-the-lake setups are the ones whose output is easily measurable, whose institutional knowledge is hard to replace, and whose seniority affords them negotiating room. That profile sounds familiar if you've been around long enough to have a professional track record worth protecting.

The tech sector overall ran 47% fully remote and 45% hybrid, leaving only 8% fully on-site. Finance and information industries posted remote work rates above 50%. These sectors aren't retreating from flexibility, they're managing it more deliberately. It is a recalibration, not a retreat.

One undersold pocket of opportunity: smaller companies. Among businesses with fewer than 500 employees, 67% operate fully remotely. Big-brand RTO mandates don't represent the full market, they represent the loudest slice of it. A mid-market professional services firm in Dallas or a software company with 200 employees in Denver doesn't hold a press conference when it keeps its remote policy. It just quietly keeps it. If you’re hunting remote work, look for those companies.

My companies are all completely remote. They have been from day one. My wife’s employment has been with a fully remote company for the last 7 years. It is a fully remote-first company as well.

The key feature of remote first companies is their understanding of what work really is. Knowledge work, some sales work, and most of the administrative tasks done corporately may be measured by work output, the deliverable. The time given to it should NOT be the value of the position. The output necessary for the position should be the primary focus.

If this philosophy were the predominant one, far more work would be remote than currently offered.

This is where you’ll want to pay close attention, because the data runs directly counter to the conventional wisdom that remote work is a young person's game.

In Q1 2026, 65% of remote role postings targeted experienced professionals, with manager-level roles accounting for another 19% and senior manager positions at 9%. Only 6% were entry-level. Read that again. Six percent of remote jobs are for beginners. The other 94% belong to people who have already figured out how to do the work.

Remote work is most common among mid-career professionals. Workers aged 35 to 44 had the highest telework rate at 27.4%, while the 55-and-older cohort held steady at 23.7%. For reference, workers aged 16 to 24 checked in at a paltry 6.2%. The youngest workers are, in fact, the least likely to be working remotely because most of them are in jobs that require physical presence and because entry-level roles demand in-person proximity to training and supervision. Experience is the credential that unlocks flexibility.

Workers with an advanced degree hold the highest remote work rate at 41.2%. Those with only a Bachelor's degree came in at 36.8%. Education signals to employers what experience confirms: can this person execute independently, without a manager hovering nearby? If your answer is yes, and decades of career performance say it is, you are exactly the candidate that remote-forward employers are looking for.

Demand for experienced remote and hybrid technology and professional services professionals increased nearly 20% year-over-year in Q4 2025, slightly outpacing comparable in-office roles despite highly publicized return-to-office mandates. Senior professionals saw strong demand growth, while generalists and entry-level workers saw weaker demand. The RTO noise is real. But the demand for senior remote talent is also real and growing.

Fast-growing remote categories in Q1 2026 are also worth noting. Sales and business development remote roles grew 40%, while account management, marketing, and communications each expanded by 30% or more. Meanwhile, medical and health and computer and IT roles maintained consistently high remote availability. If your background is in any of these areas, the demand appears positive.

The platform landscape for remote jobs has matured considerably which is good news and a trap simultaneously. Good news because there are now legitimate, vetted resources. A trap because the internet also remains overly populated with listings that are part job posting, part audition for a multilevel marketing scheme. Be wise with your inquiries.

I’d also throw https://hiremymom.com into the list above as well.

For quality over quantity, FlexJobs offers the most carefully vetted listings, every posting is manually reviewed before it goes live, with no freelancer scams or pyramid schemes disguised as flexible income opportunities. The paid access model is worth it, according to review. It filters out the tire-kickers and ensures you're competing with serious candidates, not the entire internet.

Three Tips for Finding Remote Work and Knowing Who to Trust

1) Curate your boards, don't accumulate them

Pick two vetted platforms and work them with discipline.

FlexJobs for screened quality, LinkedIn for network-driven visibility. Set daily alerts. Apply within 24 hours of posting; competitive remote roles move fast. The professionals getting hired aren't applying to 200 listings. They're applying to 10 good ones with precision materials. Volume is the enemy of signal. General boards like Indeed have their place, but they require heavy filtering to separate genuine remote roles from hybrid listings mislabeled as flexible. Use specialized boards first; use general boards for market research.

2) Verify before you invest your time

The remote job space still attracts fraud at a rate that would make a reasonable person suspicious of their own inbox. Before you customize a cover letter, run a quick verification: search the company name plus "review" on Glassdoor or Trustpilot; confirm the employer has a real website, a LinkedIn company page with active employees, and a physical address. Legitimate remote employers never request payment for onboarding, software, or background checks. They also don't make offers within 24 hours of a first contact by email. If something feels like it's moving too fast or the compensation is too extraordinary, it probably is. Your best filter for trusted sources: platforms that manually vet listings (FlexJobs, Jobspresso) and direct-source postings on employer career pages, where the company controls the listing and the process.

3) Position yourself as the problem-solver, not the flexible employee

Remote employers aren't hiring people who want to work in their pajamas. They're hiring people who can execute independently, communicate with precision, and deliver results without a daily stand-up as a guardrail. Your resume, LinkedIn headline, and cover letter need to speak to outcomes, not tenure. Quantify your impact. Replace "managed a team" with "led a 12-person cross-functional team that cut delivery time 30% over 18 months." This is especially critical for those of us with long careers: the instinct is to list everything. The discipline is to curate it around what the employer actually needs. Also ask the right question in every conversation: "How do you measure success in this role in the first 90 days?" The answer tells you everything about whether this employer actually knows how to manage remote talent or whether they're going to spend the next six months trying to replicate the office over Zoom.

In summary,

Remote work is not in hospice. It has not been cancelled or rendered obsolete by a Wall Street executive making a pronouncement from a conference room he himself hasn't visited since Tuesday. What it has done is tightened up. The easy pandemic-era abundance is gone. What remains is real, competitive, and weighted heavily toward the experienced professional.

Despite 83% of CEOs anticipating a full return to office by 2027, remote work rates have increased from 17.9% in October 2022 to 23.7% in early 2025. Badge-swipe and cell phone data show employees aren't complying at the rates employers expect. The gap between executive aspiration and employee behavior is wide.

The professionals landing remote roles right now are not the ones waiting for the market to swing back in their direction. They are the ones who read the conditions clearly, positioned their experience as the answer to a specific business problem, and applied with the specificity that general job seekers can't match. And, they are networking.

You've spent decades solving hard problems for organizations. The market for that skill set is intact. It just requires you to be as deliberate in your search as you were in your career.

If you need assistance or want to discuss anything listed above, schedule a call.

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In her own words via AI

I have taken liberties with this week’s Over 50 Voice. It will not be the last time. Let me explain the process. I researched historical Over 50 voices with extensive authoritative documentation made about their life. I searched for people who had spoken, written, and recorded enough to unequivocally leave a “voice” of their own on culture. There is no guessing as to what the opinions, feelings, and quotes of the individuals were or would be today. With this research, I prompted for 6 to 8 thoughtful questions that I might ask if they were sitting across from me today. After a careful review of those questions, I prompted for very specific documentation featuring the actual voice of the figure. I then trained AI to answer the questions posed with the known research and documentation available in the voice of the subject. At the time Annie Turnbo Malone founded Poro College, she was 49, just turning 50. To me, it’s a fair exception. I was inspired by what I learned and hope you are as well.

Q1. You dropped out of high school, had no formal business training, and launched your first product out of a rented room in a small Illinois town. What did you know about Black women's hair that the entire marketplace had somehow missed?

I knew what I saw with my own eyes.

Women were burning their scalps with lye. Coating their hair in bacon grease and goose fat because there was nothing else, nothing designed for them, nothing made with them in mind. The marketplace had not missed anything. The marketplace had made a decision. It had decided that Black women were not worth solving for.

I disagreed.

I was not a trained chemist. But I was observant, and I was willing to sit with a problem until I understood it. I studied hair. I studied the scalp. I listened to what women complained about and what they wished for. That is where every real product begins, not in a laboratory, but in a conversation.

What I understood was this: the problem was not cosmetic. It was medical. Women were losing hair because of damage, not because of nature. And if the cause was damage, then the solution was care. Real care. A preparation that would clean, nourish, and restore, not coat and conceal.

The marketplace missed it because it was not looking. I was looking because I had to be.

That is the only advantage I ever claimed.

Q2. You didn't just build a product company. You built Poro College, a complete ecosystem. What were you actually building?

I was building a door.

When I arrived in St. Louis, I understood something about this country that has not changed as much as people like to believe: there are rooms that certain people are not permitted to enter. And when you cannot enter, you must build your own room.

Poro College was not a beauty school. It was an economic system.

Every woman who walked through those doors came in with very little, no capital, no connections, no credential that the outside world would recognize. She left with a skill, a standard, a system, and the means to earn her own way. That is not beauty school. That is infrastructure.

I gave her a manufacturing plant so she knew where her products came from. I gave her a training center so she understood why the methods worked. I gave her an auditorium, a community, a roof garden, because a woman who feels dignity in her surroundings begins to believe she deserves dignity in her life.

You do not build loyalty with a paycheck. You build it by treating people as though their development matters to you. Because it should.

I was not building a company. I was building capacity. Seventy-five thousand agents across this country and beyond, that is not a sales force. That is a movement wearing a uniform.

When you give a woman the tools to provide for herself, you have given her something no one can take away. Not a husband. Not a lawsuit. Not a depression.

Build the door. Then teach others to build their own.

Q3. Your franchise network reached 75,000 agents across multiple continents before Instagram, before email, before the interstate. How did you scale trust at that level?

You scale trust the same way you earn it in a single room.

You show up. You deliver what you promised. You do not cut corners because no one is watching, because someone is always watching. And when the product works, when a woman's scalp heals, when her hair grows, when she looks in the mirror and sees something she had stopped hoping for, she tells her neighbor. She tells her church. She tells her cousin in another city.

That is your distribution network. Not a catalog. Not an advertisement. A woman who believes in what you gave her.

But belief is not enough. You must also build the system that protects belief.

Every Poro agent was trained, not merely informed. There is a difference. I did not hand a woman a bottle and wish her well. I trained her in the method, the hygiene, the presentation, the conduct. I gave her standards. Because when she walked into a customer's home, she was not representing herself. She was representing every Poro agent who came before her and every one who would come after.

One agent who is careless, one product that is inconsistent, one interaction that is beneath the standard, that is not a small problem. That is a signal. It tells the customer that the whole enterprise cannot be trusted.

So you train to the standard. You hold to the standard. You replace the agent who will not hold it.

That is how you scale trust. Not with words. With systems. And with the discipline to protect them.

Q4. Sarah Breedlove, who became Madam C.J. Walker, was once your agent. She left, built a competing empire, and history gave her the headline and you the footnote. How do you hold that?

I hold it as a lesson, not a wound.

Sarah was a capable woman. I knew that when I trained her. That is why I trained her as well as I did.

What she did with what she learned, I will leave that between her and her conscience. What I know is this: I built first. I built from nothing, in an era that gave women like me nothing to build with. The fact that someone else later took a version of what I created and made it louder, made it larger in the public memory. That does not diminish what I built. It confirms it.

You cannot scale what has not first been created.

There is a difference between the person who breaks the ground and the person who builds the house on it. History tends to remember the house. That is human nature. It is also shortsighted.

But I did not build Poro so that my name would be spoken a hundred years later. I built it so that women would be able to provide for themselves, to stand with dignity, to send their children to school. If that work continues to matter, if women still find independence through beauty culture, if the standard I set still echoes, then what does it matter whether they say my name?

Do not build for the headline. Build for the result.

And if someone takes your formula and builds a fortune — make sure you have already built a better one.

Q5. Your business survived two damaging divorces, multiple lawsuits, the IRS, and the Great Depression. What kept you going and what would you say to the professional today who just had the rug pulled out from under them?

I would say: the rug was never the foundation.

What you are feeling right now, the disorientation, the indignity, the sense that what you built has been taken; that is real. Do not dismiss it. But do not let it become your story.

I have had husbands who tried to take half of what I built with my own hands. I have had employees claim credit for work I designed. I have had governments pursue me with taxes and seizures while I was still giving money to orphanages. I understand disruption.

What kept me going was not optimism. Optimism is not a strategy.

What kept me going was the understanding that the work itself was not finished. There were still women who needed a path. There were still agents who depended on the system I had built. There were still children in St. Louis who needed what the orphanage provided. The work does not stop because your circumstances became uncomfortable.

And here is what I would offer to the professional who feels the floor has shifted:

You still have your standards. They did not take those. You still have your knowledge. You still have your relationships, the ones built on genuine service, the ones that are yours because you earned them, not because a title gave them to you. Those survive the lawsuit. Those survive the divorce. Those survive the restructuring.

Start there.

Do not ask what you lost. Ask what you still know how to do. Then do it — cleanly, confidently, and at the standard you have always held.

The rug was never the foundation. You are the foundation.

Q6. You became the highest individual income taxpayer in the state of Missouri. You lived modestly, gave generously, and died with a fraction of what you once had. Was that a philosophy or a compulsion?

It was neither. It was arithmetic.

I looked at what a community needed. I looked at what I had. The calculation was not complicated.

When you have seen what poverty does to a child, what it does to a woman who has no skill, no income, no protection, money sitting still in a bank account feels like a kind of cowardice. I was not interested in cowardice.

I gave to Howard University because Black doctors need training. I gave to the orphanage because children cannot wait for someone else to decide they matter. I gave to the YMCA because young men need structure. I gave because these were not charities to me, they were investments in the conditions that make a community functional.

Did I give more than was financially wise? Perhaps. That is a fair criticism.

But I will tell you what I believed then and believe still: a woman who accumulates without building community around her accumulates alone. And alone is a fragile position.

What I did not anticipate was that the lawsuits and the government and the years of harassment would compound the cost. I believed that right conduct protected you. I still believe it. But right conduct is not a shield against every attack.

That is the part I would do differently. Not the giving, the protecting. Protect your structure as vigorously as you protect your reputation. They are not the same thing, and I learned that later than I should have.

Build generously. But build durably first.

Q7. Looking back across a century, what is the one thing you wish the next generation of builders understood about building something that actually lasts?

Build the person before you build the business.

That is what Poro was, at its foundation. Not the product. Not the college. Not the network. The training. The standard. The expectation that every woman who carried the Poro name would carry it with discipline, dignity, and intention.

The business survives or fails based on the quality of the people inside it. Every time. Without exception.

I have watched enterprises collapse that had every advantage, capital, connections, and market position. They collapsed because the people running them did not have a standard they were unwilling to compromise. And I have watched women with nothing build something lasting because they held themselves to an exacting code and refused to lower it when times became difficult.

You are what you do when no one is watching. You are what you do when the money is tight and the shortcut is available. You are what you do when the other person behaved badly and you could justify behaving the same way.

Build yourself first. Then build your business from that foundation.

And when you succeed, and you will succeed, if you do the work with integrity, remember that your success is not yours alone. You carry with you everyone who was told they could not. You carry the woman who will look at what you built and decide that she can build too.

That is the weight of it. It is also the gift.

Do not think of what you are building as a career. Think of it as proof.

Think of it as freedom.

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I’ve been working remotely for years now. Often, it was out of necessity. I had no place to go. Sometimes it was at home, and other times, it was at coffee and cigar shops because the place I lived at the time didn’t have an internet connection. You do what you have to do.

Working remotely takes a certain type of mindset in my opinion. You have to be self-motivated and not motivated by others. What you do has to be important or urgent enough for you to get out of bed in the morning, or night, or whenever you are required to do your task.

Also, most remote work is task oriented, not time oriented. Bosses have a real issue with this sometimes. They want to control, not lead. If you are a bad delegator, you will have trouble managing remote teams. Remote work succeeds when trust, clarity, and accountability replace constant oversight.

If you have stories around remote work, I’d love to hear about them. Hit me up on LinkedIn and let’s share.

And as always, if you need help with anything related to topics in the newsletter or transition over 50 years old, schedule a call.

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