RIP remote?

The remote work dream isn’t dead, but it sure is slipping away

RIP remote work. Or so says The Globe and Mail after looking at Robert Half’s latest data on job postings in Q2 2026, which showed that 84 per cent of new postings were fully on-site, up from 63 per cent at the end of last year. Hybrid fell to 13 per cent from 27, and fully remote to three per cent from 10.

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“This sharp decline suggests that after multiple years of announcing rollbacks to remote and hybrid policies, many companies have finalized and executed their return-to-office plans,” Robert Half said.

Could it be that the remote work era is truly dead and buried? Columnist John Turley-Ewart argues that we’re just coming back to baseline.

“The future of work wasn’t remote work. It was just a solution to a crisis,” he wrote.

That’s not far from what employers have been saying since about 2021, when the in-office push really started again; many employers, particularly in more traditional sectors, have acted like remote work was nothing more than a phase.

Turley-Ewart is probably overstating things a bit. Saying we’re going back to baseline is probably wrong and understates the scale of change remote work ushered in. Still, he’s not wrong that the pendulum has swung away from remote work dramatically over the last 12 to 18 months.

“There’s a number of factors, but the number one we hear from employers is ultimately they believe that having employees collaborating [in-person] creates improved communication, improved collaboration and overall strength in the culture,” said Koula Vasilopoulos, a senior managing director for Robert Half Canada. (Of course, if you believe in remote work, the word believe is doing a lot of work there.)

If you’re currently on the job market for a new remote gig, this finding probably feels like a bit of a turd in the punchbowl. “For workers, that means more competition for fully remote roles and a near guarantee that new opportunities will come with at least some in-office time,” the report stated.

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But if there’s anything we’ve learned from the see-saw labour market of the past decade, it’s that the pendulum can, and often does, swing back the other way. And for employers, it means that will likely mean they have a new carrot to dangle: “Hybrid [work] is becoming the standard way to differentiate yourself from your competitors,” Robert Half noted.

An employer’s market, just like an employee’s market, never lasts forever. Indeed, there seem to be some indications workers are getting itchy to move again, which could bring us out of the frozen job market phase. Forty-four per cent of professionals are looking, or plan to look, for a new role in the second half of the year, with a third of them saying that flexibility is something they’re after.

Remote work may look like it’s on the ropes, but unlike the Globe, we’re not calling time of death just yet. “I think that we’re going to see employees and organizations bridge the gap,” summed up Vasilopoulos, “to get to a point where employees feel satisfied and employers are getting the value they need.” Kieran Delamont