Remote Jobs Just Grew 22% in One Quarter. Computer and IT Roles Doubled.
Remote job listings grew 22% in the second quarter of 2026. That is the second consecutive quarter of growth. Computer and IT jobs more than doubled. Project management remained the largest remote category by total volume. And the company posting the most remote jobs was not a tech startup.
It was UnitedHealth Group. Healthcare companies dominated remote hiring in Q2.
The FlexJobs Remote Work Index came out on July 9. The data runs counter to the “return to office is winning” narrative that certain CEOs want you to believe. The numbers tell a different story.
Where the Jobs Are
Computer and IT roles doubled quarter over quarter, making tech the fastest-growing remote category. This is not a return to 2021 hiring levels. It is a new wave driven by companies that have accepted distributed engineering teams as the default. GitHub, GitLab, and Stripe have been hiring remotely for years. The companies that resisted are now competing for the same talent pool and losing.
Project management grew more slowly but remains the largest category by volume. Companies need people who can coordinate distributed teams, and they have stopped pretending that coordination requires a shared office. The project manager who runs standups over Zoom and tracks progress in Linear is not a compromise. It is the standard.
Healthcare’s dominance in remote hiring is the most interesting signal. UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Anthem are posting thousands of remote roles in claims processing, care coordination, telehealth, and data analysis. Healthcare was supposed to be one of the last industries to go remote. It turns out that when you need nurses and doctors in person, you hire nurses and doctors in person. When you need claims analysts and care coordinators, you hire them wherever they are.
The Fields Hiring Now
Marketing, customer service, accounting, and education all showed growth. Entry-level remote roles expanded, which has been a stubborn gap in the remote job market for years. The “you need experience to work remotely” barrier is cracking.
The Q2 data also shows remote job growth is geographically distributed in ways it was not during the pandemic. Companies are hiring in more states, more countries, and more time zones. The concentration of remote jobs in a handful of coastal US cities is breaking down. If you live in a place that used to be a remote work desert, the Q2 data suggests that is changing.
What This Means
The 22% growth number is not evenly distributed. If you work in tech, the market is hot. If you work in healthcare administration, remote roles are expanding fast. If you work in a field where remote work was always marginal, it is still marginal.
But the direction is clear. Remote work is not receding to pandemic-era emergency measures. It is settling into a permanent, growing segment of the labor market. The companies hiring are not doing it as a favor to employees. They are doing it because they cannot find people any other way.
Job growth data from FlexJobs Q2 2026 Remote Work Index, published July 9, 2026. Category breakdowns and employer rankings from the same report.
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