The next phase of remote work will be even more disruptive

As jarring as the transition to remote work was during the coronavirus pandemic, it was modest compared to what’s coming next, says Adam Ozimek, a labor economist at the freelancing platform Upwork. He argues that the next phase of remote work will transform economies, as more companies revise their policies to accommodate employees who have permanently shifted to working remotely, and more workers move to places they’ve always wanted to live but couldn’t.

Ozimek and the team at Upwork have conducted surveys on remote work since the pandemic’s start, and his outlook is based partly on those results. He predicts that remote-first startups will figure out new ways of working asynchronously, making fully-remote work more manageable than the version we use today. And he expects economic geography to shift in big ways, with workers free to live wherever they want to—from hometowns to ski towns—instead of wherever they work.

Quartz spoke to Ozimek about what the next iteration of remote work could look like. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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