Want to make $250,000? You probably have to say goodbye to flexible work, new data reveals

Listings for jobs that allow high earners to work remotely have dropped 60% year-over-year, new Ladders research has found, and those that allow a hybrid arrangement have dropped by 95%.

The biggest dips in flexibility have come for the highest-paying jobs, those offering salaries of $250,000 or more. Of the more-than-500,000 jobs posted on Ladders in the past year, just 4% of $250,000-plus roles were fully remote; less than 1% were hybrid. That’s a precipitous fall: Just one year ago, 10% of high-paying gigs were fully remote, and 6% were hybrid, per earlier Ladders data. 

Disappearing remote listings is a fact of the job market—even for jobs paying much more average salaries. On LinkedIn, U.S. remote-job postings fell 9% last year—and even though just 10% of listings on the site are remote, they received almost half of all applications. That makes for a tight race for a vanishingly small portion of roles. 

“Competition overall is going up for all jobs, in part because there are just less jobs available,” Kory Kantenga, a senior economist at LinkedIn, told Fortune’s Emma Burleigh. “But if you are looking for a remote or hybrid position, with even fewer positions available relative to all positions, it’s going to be much more competitive.” That’s bad news for workers who believe flexibility has become all but compulsory in any potential job offer.

For Ladders jobseekers, there’s also the matter of how insignificant that six-figure mark even is. Worse still, Ladders added, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data: In order to capture the earning power of $100,000 one generation ago, today’s job hunters will need to rake in $212,000. “You could even say that thanks to inflation wreaking havoc on family budgets, $200,000 is the new $100,000 when it comes to careers,” John Mullinix, Ladders’ director of growth marketing and research lead, wrote in the report. “It’s clear $100,000 is no longer the gold standard salary.” 

Indeed, many young earners netting those salaries have told Fortune they can hardly put their feet up—yet. “I’m financially secure, but I don’t consider myself wealthy by any stretch of the imagination,” one such earner told Fortune’s Alicia Adamczyk. “I budget really intensely and try to forego things that aren’t a priority.” 

The earner said since notching a six-figure job, the hedonic treadmill “is only amplified,” not abated. “When I was making $65,000, I thought I’d just need to get to the 70s. And then the 80s and 90s,” he said. “I saw an opening last week where the pay range is $150,000 to $200,000. I’m like, ‘wow all my dreams will come true.’ But will I ever get to a point where I’m satiated, I’m good? I probably won’t.”

It’s bad enough for anyone, in any job, to lose the privileges and flexibility that the pandemic in many cases offered them. It may be a particularly hard blow to the high-level workers able to command those eye-popping salaries, particularly because of the amount of work it took to nab them.

It’s “absolutely a myth” that jobs paying over $250,000 are available to workers who haven’t made “some serious sacrifices” to be eligible, Mullinix wrote. “We’re talking advanced degrees, specialized residencies, certifications, and substantial experience.” That’s to say nothing of how ultra-rich some workers have gotten, with or without accolades; an American household now needs to rake in over $650,000 to crack the 1%.