New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that remote workers in North Texas earn substantially more than residents who commute to their jobs.

The latest data revealed that the median earnings for remote workers in the city were $77,000 in 2023, more than 50% higher than the $51,100 median earnings for other workers that same year. According to one estimate by Visual Capitalist, 15.6% of workers in Dallas-Fort Worth, roughly 688,000 people, held remote positions in 2023.

In some DFW cities, the rate of remote work is substantially higher.

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Earlier this year, The Dallas Express reported that Frisco maintains the highest share of remote workers anywhere in the United States. More than 40,000 Frisco residents work remotely, representing more than one-third of the city’s 117,193-strong workforce. This represents nearly three times the country’s median rate of 12.5%.

Among the five largest metropolitan areas in the country, remote workers in New York and Chicago earned the highest median incomes, exceeding $80,000 per year. The Houston metro area recorded the lowest of the five at under $70,000.
In 2019, only 5.7% of U.S. workers were remote, a figure that rose to 13.8% by 2023 after peaking at 17.9% during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bill Fulton, an urban planner and former mayor of Ventura, California, said remote working positions tend to be more white-collar in nature, not blue-collar or service work. They also tend to include more highly educated workers, both factors that may contribute to the higher median wages.