Effects of Remote Designation on Applications and Selections to Federal Government Jobs

Date published: January 16, 2025

Why did we do this study?

In 2022, OPM created a new designation of “remote” for Federal job announcements on USAJOBS and updated search capabilities to allow applicants to search for remote positions. We conducted a study to explore whether and how this new designation affected applicants and the hiring process to better understand the effect of remote work on the Federal government’s ability to attract top talent.

This study examined whether positions advertised as remote attract more applications, whether the diversity of the candidate pool for remote positions differs from non-remote positions, whether the position’s designation affects selection rates, and whether the diversity of the hiring pool for remote positions differs from non-remote positions.

What approach did we use?

Due to systematic differences in the types of positions that could be designated as remote, this study seeks to construct a better comparison group of non-remote jobs to evaluate the effect of the remote work designation. We limited job announcements to those advertised between August 2022 and December 2022, covering the initial period of the new designation. Remote positions represented about 4% of all job announcements in this study. We restricted the analysis to 10 job series with the highest proportions of remote jobs. In this subsample, remote announcements make up 9% of all jobs . To create matched pairs of remote and non-remote jobs, we conducted designed cardinality matching, which grouped remote and non-remote jobs on specific criteria and then identified pairs that were the most similar. Matched pairs are in the same job series and agency, have the same hiring path, have similar opening and closing dates, and have minimum salaries within $15,000 of each other. After matching, no statistically significant differences existed on match criteria between remote and non-remote positions. The effect of remote designation is evaluated using fixed effects for each matched pair (3,556 observations, 1,778 pairs). Unless otherwise indicated, all reported differences are statistically significant at p < 0.05.

What did we learn?

The remote designation has a strong and consistent effect on application volume. Figure 1 shows the average number of applications across the hiring path. Remote positions receive many more applications than non-remote positions, about 293 more per announcement, and have more eligible (148) and referred (42).

Figure 1: Average applications, eligible applications, and referred applications by position designation

Figure 1 Description

Remote positions also select more candidates. Figure 2 illustrates the average selected candidates per announcement comparing remote and non-remote positions. Overall, 6 percentage points more remote announcements select candidates than non-remote.

Figure 2: Average number of selections per announcement

Figure 2 Description

Remote announcements attracted more applications from all racial identities: 124 additional applications from white candidates and 169 more from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) candidates. Remote announcements had more eligible and referred applications from all racial identities. Figure 3 shows the average percent of jobs that have qualified candidates from all racial identities, which does not take systematic differences between jobs into account. When differences between jobs are accounted for, remote jobs are 8 percentage points more likely to all racial identities represented in the qualified pool of candidates. Similarly, 3 percentage points more remote announcements had referred applications from all racial identities.

Figure 3: Percent of announcements with qualified and referred applications from all racial identities

Figure 3 Description

Remote positions selected more candidates from all racial groups. Overall, White and Hispanic candidates were selected at higher rates for remote positions than non-remote (6 percentage points and 2 percentage points more, respectively). However, these differences appear to be strongly related to the hiring path used for the position. Figure 4 shows the percent difference in selection between remote and non-remote position separately for positions open to the public (Delegated Examining) and those open to Federal employees (Merit Promotion Program).¹

Positions open to Federal employees select White candidates and candidates who do not provide their race at higher rates for remote positions. Positions open to the public show no significant differences in the percent of applications selected by race.

Figure 4: Difference in percent of announcement selection between remote and non-remote by race and hiring path

Note: The dot indicates the point estimate and the bar shows the 95% confidence interval.

Figure 4 Description

Remote announcements also attracted more veterans, women, and people with disabilities. Figure 5 illustrates that all of these groups showed higher numbers of applications and more qualified and referred applications.

Figure 5: Average applications per announcement by hiring stage and demographic group

Note: Scales differ between demographic group.

Figure 5 Description

More candidates with disabilities, more veterans, and more women were selected for remote positions than non-remote positions as shown in Figure 6. In addition, no reduction in the selection of people without disabilities, non-veterans, or men is evident in the analysis. Some small differences in selection exist between positions open to the public and those only open to Federal employees. The increased veteran selections for remote positions is affected by hiring path; significantly more veterans are selected for positions open to the public, while there is no statistical difference for positions open to Federal employees. Conversely, the increase in selections of female candidates is driven by increased selection in positions open to Federal employees, with no difference observed in selections for positions open to the public. There is no difference in selection of applicants with disabilities and men by hiring path.

Figure 6: Average number of selections per announcement by demographic group

Figure 6 Description

What does this mean?

This analysis suggests that remote announcements attract a larger, more qualified, and more diverse candidate pool than non-remote positions. When comparing similar positions, remote positions consistently receive more applications, and have more eligible, qualified, referred and selected candidates. The larger applicant pool is more diverse in terms of race, ability, sex, and veteran status, and selections are more diverse but do not disfavor other groups. Remote hiring may be an effective strategy for Federal government to attract and hire diverse, skilled talent in certain circumstances.

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