The Perfect Storm: Why Contract Hiring In Privacy Will Eclipse Direct Hiring

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Remote Flexibility Drives Job Seekers

The top motivator for job seekers in 2021, 2022, and 2023 was the desire to work remotely from home more often than their current employer allowed. In 2021, 75% of offers accepted required three or fewer days in an office, but 80% of that 75% were fully remote. In 2022, 87% of jobs were hybrid three days or fewer, but only 69% of those jobs were fully remote. In 2023, hybrid employment accelerated to 90% of offers accepted, but the amount of those roles that were 100% remote dropped dramatically to 32% (see Figure 1). With significantly fewer fully remote positions available in 2023, active job seekers were faced with the question of whether to begin considering compromises on work-from-home flexibility or compromise in other areas like compensation, vertical mobility, quality of life, or employment modality.

As the job market no longer produces the same volume of direct hire fully remote opportunities, job seekers in privacy are more readily considering working contract and contract-to-hire to maintain fully remote employment.

TRU predicts based on the behavior of the job market in the first quarter of 2024 that approximately 85% of offers accepted will be hybrid this year, but the amount that will be fully remote will accelerate slightly to 42%. This is because job seekers are more willing to work contract or contract-to-hire than they are to give up their work-from-home flexibility, and because hiring managers are going to get more approval for more contractors than direct hires this year.