MBO Partners this week released Digital Nomads: Leading the Shift to Remote and Distributed Work. The key finding of this study is 7.3 million Americans identify as digital nomads.
Digital nomads are people who choose to embrace a location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle that allows them to travel and work remotely, anywhere in the world.
There are many kinds of digital nomads. Some are nomadic for relatively short periods of time. Others travel for many years.
Some regularly move across countries and continents.
And yes, some really do sip Mai Tai's on the beach in Bali while banging away on their laptops.
But others never cross a border, choosing instead to live and work while exploring a single location or country (#VanLifers, for example).
What unites them is their passion for travel and new experiences and their commitment to working remotely.
One of the more interesting study findings is 44% (3.1 million) of the digital nomads report having a traditional job. This is a clear signal that employers, at least in some cases, are willing to allow traditional employees to be digital nomads.
Other findings include:
- Digital nomads tend to be younger and male, but all age groups are represented: 39 percent are female and 41 percent are 40 years old or older.
- Most digital nomads report being highly satisfied (79 percent) or satisfied (9 percent) with their work and lifestyle.
- Most also report either being very satisfied (35 percent) or satisfied (44 percent) with their income.
- Digital nomads work in a wide variety of fields, ranging from consulting, coaching, and research (13%) to sales, marketing, and PR (also 13%) to other remote-friendly fields like information technology (11%) and creative services (9%).
As we've found in the past, a lot of Americans would like to be digital nomads. 16.1 million said they plan on becoming digital nomads over the next 2-3 years and 41 million said they may become one.
Of course, relatively few of these people will do so.
The vast majority will continue to be what we call "armchair digital nomads" - folks that follow the many blogs, Instagram accounts and related digital nomad media but don't become one themselves.
We're interested in digital nomads (we worked with MBO Partners on this study) because they are on the leading edge of remote work. This makes them an ideal group to study to better understand the future of distributed work and the technologies that support it.
See the report for more details.
See our digital nomad section for more coverage of digital nomads.
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