Finance
Many workers would take a pay cut to work from home
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Many workers value remote work to such a degree that they’d take a pay cut to be able to work from home, even on a part-time basis, studies show.
The prevalence of remote work ballooned during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many experienced telework perhaps for the first time in their careers; employees cite work-life balance as by far the biggest perceived benefit, according to Pew Research Center.
Some researchers have quantified the financial value workers assign to telework.
For example, about 40% of workers say they’d accept a pay cut of at least 5% to keep their remote job, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
About 9% would trade at least 20% of their salaries to preserve telework, said researchers, who polled more than 2,000 workers.
Put another way, workers see the ability to work from home — even two or three days a week — as equivalent to getting a raise, according to Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies workplace management practices.
Data that Bloom has collected in recent years suggests the average worker equates remote work to about an 8% raise, he said.
“That figure seems remarkably stable” over time, Bloom said in an e-mail.
“For some subsets of workers you can find higher numbers,” relative to the pay cut they would accept, Bloom said.
For example, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published in January that looked at workers predominantly in the technology field found they’d accept an average 25% pay cut for a job that offers fully or partially remote work.
“The reality is: It is a very attractive feature of a job,” said Zoe Cullen, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, who co-authored the NBER research.
The paper examined data on almost 1,400 workers from the U.S. tech sector. The average person was 32 years old, and had about seven years of work experience. Researchers gathered data on the job offers individuals receive and the jobs they ultimately choose, with the average gig offering $239,000 a year in total compensation.
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Of course, not all Americans prefer out-of-office work.
About 41% of workers with the ability to telework — but who rarely do — say in-office work helps them feel more connected to co-workers, and 30% think in-person work helps with mentoring opportunities, according to Pew Research Center.
Working from home has also waned from its pandemic-era peak.
Big companies like Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Dell Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, UPS and The Washington Post have initiated return-to-office mandates for at least some employees.
President Donald Trump also issued an order Jan. 20 to terminate remote work for federal employees and require full-time in-office attendance, with some exceptions.
That said, on a national scale, employers don’t seem to be retrenching en masse, according to labor economists.
The number of paid days worked from home during the workweek has held steady for the past two years, at between 25% and 30% — more than triple the pre-Covid rate, according to WFH Research.
Employees aren’t the only ones who get a benefit: Remote work is also a profitable arrangement for businesses, according to labor economists.
For example, employers may save money on real estate by downsizing office space. They may also hire job candidates from across the country, potentially at a lower relative salary, depending on geography.
Workers with the ability to work from home also tend to quit less frequently, thereby reducing company spending on expensive functions like hiring, recruitment and training, Bloom said.
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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