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in or near cities , as were the services needed to fill them , such as transportation , housing , and food . The suburbs were defined by their proximity to cities , and homes were places to return to at day ’ s end . So what if , for wide swaths of the working populace , that no longer applies ?

A Gallup poll released in October revealed that 33 % of job holders in the United States were always remote and an additional 25 % were occasionally remote . Major tech companies like Twitter , Facebook , and Slack have told their employees that working from home is now at least semipermanent , and other institutions such as universities and hospitals expect virtual instruction and care to be standard offerings . A PwC survey found that more than half of all office workers — 55 %— would like to work remotely three days a week or more , and fewer than one in five employers want to return to the office as it was before .

This disruption has resulted in a remote-worker migration where up to 23 million people could move in the US alone and a labor shift that is setting off ripple effects across industry , real estate , and government . In industry surveys , workers in fields like tech and finance say

they ’ ll ditch expensive cities such as San Francisco and Seattle . Meanwhile , 15 % of 3,300 tech workers sampled who were living in the Bay Area have left . And those who move are more than twice as likely to settle in less dense regions with lower housing costs .

Cities like Burlington , Vermont ; Bend , Oregon ; and Butte , Montana , have become Zoom Towns , with swarms of new arrivals in recent months . Farther afield , remote workers are also moving to places like Somerset , England , and Western Australia . Even India ’ s Silicon Valley in Bengaluru ( also called Bangalore ) is emptying out . If an area has reliable Wi-Fi , a connection to nature , and good transportation links to larger hubs , remote workers are flocking there .

REMOTE WORK has been on the rise for good reason . Before COVID-19 , the cost of living in the most expensive US cities was around 40 % to 80 % percent higher than the national average , a trend mirrored in global capitals like London , Paris , and Tokyo . Smaller municipalities such as Tulsa , Oklahoma , were already luring big-city residents with more space , cheaper

prices , and offers of grants and coworking space . The trend isn ’ t new , but “ this past year it has been on steroids ,” says Prithwiraj “ Raj ” Choudhury , a professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on the future of work and wrote about the shift recently for the Harvard Business Review .

In 2020 , large numbers of workers , restricted from going to the office , began to take a harder look at their home , work , and outdoor spaces . Just 36 % of homes in US cities like New York City and San Francisco have a spare bedroom for an office . Choudhury , who advised Tulsa and is helping the local governments of Venice and Cape Town attract remote workers , says , “ This has really become a national and international phenomenon .” The acceleration of trends by the pandemic has shifted remote-worker migration into hyperdrive .

So what does this mean for the towns people are moving to ?

Danya Lee Rumore , a professor at the University of Utah , says “ gateway communities ” in the Mountain West — smaller towns that are located close to a national park or ski resort and have populations of fewer than 25,000 , like Moab , Utah ,