Remote Work Is Here To Stay, New Local Study Says

Forty-three percent of the regional workforce would prefer to work remotely full-time. So says a newly-published study from Networks Northwest. The study includes data from the 10-county Grand Traverse region and kicked off this spring in response to a dearth of empirical data about remote work in northwest Michigan. In the view of Networks Northwest CEO Janie McNabb, the results show two things: That remote work is here to stay and that northern Michigan needs more resources to support its growing base of teleworkers.

“All told, about 23 percent of the local 10-county workforce works remotely in some way, shape, or form,” McNabb tells The Ticker. “That might be hybrid, or it might be full-time, but it’s substantial, and it’s actually up from 17 percent in 2022.”

For McNabb, that increase stands as a rejoinder to the common myth that remote work was merely a COVID-19 stopgap. In fact, she says 79 percent of the 800 or so northern Michiganders who responded to a Networks Northwest survey indicated they had been working remotely in some fashion prior to the pandemic.

“If you pair that information with another key takeaway, which is that 59 percent of our respondents have only lived in their primary residence for five years or less, what that tells me is that people who moved here during the pandemic had a level of confidence in their ability to continue working remotely, because they had been working remotely prior,” McNabb says. “When COVID came along, those folks said, ‘OK, everybody is [working remotely now], so I can move to northern Michigan, because I want to be there, I have this flexibility with my work, and it's been that way for long enough that I know it will continue.”

It was a desire to quantify trends like pandemic-era migration that prompted Networks Northwest to undertake the new “Northwest Michigan Remote Worker Study.” Speaking to Ticker sister publication the Traverse City Business News in July, McNabb explained that, despite having lots of anecdotal data about the popularity of remote work or about people who moved here because their jobs went virtual, there was no research to quantify it.

Thanks to a grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), Networks Northwest began in May “to gain insights into the prevalence, preferences, challenges, needs and demographics of remote and hybrid workers in the northwest lower Michigan region.” Data came not just from the online survey, but also “regional in-person focus groups” and analysis of national remote work research.

The key finding of the study is that, both nationally and regionally, remote work peaked during the early days of the pandemic and dipped in the years immediately following, but has increased again between 2022 and 2024. The caveat? While more people are teleworking than a few years ago, they are doing so “for fewer hours per week,” because their employers have moved to hybrid work models.

While nearly a quarter of local workers are teleworking in some fashion, less than half of them are doing so full-time. Those findings correspond with national data from a 2025 American Society of Employers (ASE) study, which found that “employers allowing ‘as-needed’ or ‘on-demand’ remote work rose from 26 percent in 2023 to 38.9 percent in 2025.” The number of organizations offering “formal remote work options for all or part of their workforce” dipped from 66 percent to 48.2 percent in the same timeframe.

Just as Networks Northwest was putting the finishing touches on its study, Traverse City’s biggest private employer, Hagerty, announced a pivot from its long-held “remote-first” work strategy to a hybrid model. While McNabb says Networks Northwest didn’t speak to Hagerty for this study, she sees the company’s change to hybrid – rather than a full return-to-office plan – as a harbinger of what local employers will need to do to remain competitive.

“One of the survey questions we asked was ‘Are you more apt to work for a company that offers remote work?’ 56 percent said ‘Definitely yes,’ and another 17 percent said ‘Probably yes,’” McNabb says. “So, even as companies call people back to the office, continuing to offer some level of remote work as an option is what the workforce seems to really want.”

The Networks Northwest report also sketches out recommendations for how communities could better support remote workers. Depending on the county, steps could include hosting networking events “specifically for remote and hybrid workers,” expanding broadband access, or increasing the availability of coworking spaces.

Remaining MEDC dollars will go toward building out those resources. In Wexford-Missaukee, the Alliance for Economic Success – one of the regional partners for the study – will allocate its share of the grant toward the Cadillac Wexford Public Library, which McNabb says has become the county’s de facto remote work hub.

Closer to home, Warren Call of Traverse Connect says he found the remote worker study “reassuring,” because Traverse City already has many of the supports it flagged – from a remote worker meetup, to a robust fiber network, to coworking spaces like 20Fathoms and Grove. The missing piece, he says, is co-located childcare and coworking spaces. That remote-work-friendly model has popped up in some places – The Aspen House, opened last year in Suttons Bay – but remains a rarity.

“Anyone that's tried to work remotely from home with a with a young child knows the challenges of trying to do those two things at the same time,” Call says. “So, if you had a spot where you could drop in, even if it’s only for a couple hours, and focus on your work while knowing your kids are well taken care of, I think there's a real opportunity to continue to promote that kind of flexibility.”

The full Hybrid and Remote Worker Study can be found here.