Companies Increasingly Reaching Across State Borders To Find Employees

Companies are reaching far and wide to find workers, even if that means a majority of new hires are in different states than the company HQ.

The trend is national, with 62% of new hires now based in a different state than their company's main office, according to a new report by investment management specialist Carta. 

That is up from 35% in 2019, the company reports. The percentage had already grown in the years before that as communications tech improved, but the pandemic spurred it to new heights.

Carta also says that 84% of companies take employee location into account when deciding on compensation packages. Mostly that isn't to the benefit of workers in less expensive places to live, who trend to receive lower pay, as do remote workers in general.

Even so, the struggle over remote work continues. Workers are back in the office more now than in the last two years, but even so office occupancy remains relatively low.

Many workers don't want to come back full time. After Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a new policy in May that required many state employees to return to the office full time, more than 300 of those workers resigned.

The federal government's efforts to bring workers back to their offices, especially in Washington, D.C., have so far reportedly been piecemeal and lackluster.

The struggle to find workers for non-laptop jobs, especially as supply chain disruptions mean that more manufacturing will be done domestically, has also intensified. 

So much so that some states and other jurisdictions are offering incentives to workers willing to relocate, such as West Virginia, which is offering $20K to people willing to move to the state and live there for two years.

“Everyone is looking for an edge,” Lightcast Senior Vice President Cara Christopher, a business development specialist, told CNBC.