Virtual Jobs Issue Brief (2019)

Background

Over the last decade, thousands of job openings have been added to the U.S. economy that do not require a job seeker to be tied to a specific location. The NLx employer community agrees this will continue to be a growing trend. Virtual jobs are broadly defined as any type of work performed outside an employer’s physical location. These types of jobs may also be referred to as telecommuting or “work-from-home” positions. Virtual jobs allow the use of personal computers, virtual private networks, and other communications technology for work in the home that was traditionally done in a separate workplace. A 2017 report by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found that 3.9 million U.S. employees work remotely at least half the time – a 15 percent increase since 2005.

State Survey on Virtual Jobs

In 2018, the NLx conducted a survey inquiring about several labor exchange topics, including state workforce agencies’ policies for posting virtual jobs in their state job banks. Out of 45 state responses, three states indicated they do not allow virtual jobs to be posted in the state job bank, while nine states have no policy related to virtual jobs. The remaining 33 states acknowledged they allow virtual jobs if they meet certain requirements, such as:

• Evidence of a bona fide job opportunity adhering to all state and federal regulations (FLSA, Wagner-Peyser, UI Act, independent contractor registration, etc.);
• Evidence of a “legitimate employee-employer relationship” (W-2 positions only);
• Business license in the state of listing;
• Physical address in the state of listing;
• Registration in the state UI system; Valid federal and/or state EIN;
• Statement of virtual/remote/telecommuting status in the job title;
• No requirement of capital investment from employee to begin working; and 
• Designation of a virtual position through a separate checkbox on job order form.

These requirements vary by state, with some states applying more scrutiny or narrower definitions of “virtual job” than others. To better facilitate the match between job seekers and employers amid shifting market conditions, states should consider evaluating their labor exchange requirements for virtual jobs.

Utah/NLx Pilot

The Utah Department of Workforce Services partnered with the NLx in 2018 to give customers the opportunity to search for more than 15,000 virtual jobs in the state job bank. DirectEmployers created a file of nationwide virtual jobs using keywords like telecommute, home based, flexible location, etc. and sent it to Utah as a separate feed. Between help desk calls and other tasks, Utah Workforce Services staff manually reviewed the file to determine if the jobs were valid telecommuting opportunities, and then coordinated with the NLx for more exclusions such as certain O*NET occupations and companies based outside of the U.S. and Canada. Utah developed 144 additional keyword filters to exclude common text strings like “must physically work in the office.”

Utah implemented the virtual jobs feed on its mobile app and state job bank in May 2018. To maintain quality, Utah staff review a small random sample of jobs daily and add filters as needed, and conduct a quarterly audit of 10% of the job file. Utah has now reached 70% accuracy for jobs that are verifiably virtual and available to jobseekers in rural Utah. In the first six months there were about 8,000 referrals without job matching, and no customer complaints. The NLx can make the filtered virtual jobs file available to other states upon request.

Benefits of Posting Virtual Jobs

Virtual jobs can facilitate flexibility with regard to preferred area of residence, transportation, and child care. People with disabilities, military spouses, and rural workers – job seekers who sometimes have difficulty finding or maintaining steady employment – are especially likely to benefit from such flexibility. By eliminating the need for daily transportation and/or operation of a physical establishment, employers stand to gain larger and more diverse candidate pools for hard-to-fill positions. If jobs were tagged as virtual jobs, state staff could focus job matching efforts for those positions on areas with high unemployment. Lastly, not posting virtual jobs could create a predicament for federal contractors. While employers listing their virtual jobs through the NLx will achieve a minimal level of compliance, they will not get actual jobseeker traffic or referrals if a state does not post the jobs in the state job bank.

Technical and Policy Considerations

Some states expressed uncertainty about how to display “location neutral” positions in state job banks. Many employers list the job in the state capital or the state’s most populous city, with a mention of the virtual aspect in the job description. This can be confusing for job seekers who are searching in a specific geographic area. Other employers list virtual jobs in multiple cities to reach a wider range of job seekers, which can distort labor demand data. NLx indexing parses listings to the first location on the job order if it has multiple location options.

A topic that requires further research is whether companies tend to offer “pure” telecommute positions, or restrict their hiring to states in which they have registered for UI taxes.

When evaluating or developing a virtual jobs policy, states may want to reference the nonexhaustive list of possible requirements in the State Survey section above, as well as the questions below.

• Do you intend to flag virtual jobs in your job bank, and if so, how?
  • Would this require adding a data field on job order forms?
  • Does your state labor exchange system allow for a separate page like jobs.utah.gov/telecommute?
• Do you want to include hybrid positions (part-time in office)?
• Do you want to restrict the virtual job file to certain O*NET occupation codes?
• What screening mechanisms, if any, will you use to account for potential overlap in “gig”/1099 jobs and virtual jobs?
• What training for staff might be necessary for the implementation of a new policy?

Questions?

Email Ellen Samoriski, Program Assistant at esamoriski@naswa.org

Revised March 2019