MBO Partners last week released Digital Nomadism: A Rising Trend, a research brief on digital nomads. We worked with MBO Partners on this study.
Digital Nomads are wanderers who have a location-independent lifestyle that allows them to travel and work anywhere they can plug into the Internet.
Some are short-term nomads who only travel and work for short periods of time. Others do it for many years. And while globe trotting digital nomads get the most media attention, many never cross a border, choosing instead to live and work while exploring a single country.
The three key study findings from our perspective are:
1. About 4.8 million Americans currently describe themselves as being digital nomads. While only about 2%-3% of U.S. adults, this is still a large number of people.
2. About 17 million Americans who aren't currently digital nomads say they will become one over the next 2-3 years. Also, 42 million say they might become one over the next 2-3 years.
The research brief points out that most of these people are unlikely to become digital nomads. Instead, they will likely continue to be "armchair digital nomads" following the exploits of digital nomads instead of becoming one themselves.
But these numbers clearly illustrate how popular the digital nomad trend has become. As the Forbes article on the study - Digital Nomadism Goes Mainstream - points out, digital nomadism has become a spectator sport followed by millions.
3. The demographics of digital nomads are broader and more diverse than most think. While they skew male and younger, 31% are female and as the chart below shows, 54% are 39 or older.
We closely follow the digital nomad trend for several reasons.
First, digital nomads are basically mobile workers on steroids. Because of this, they provide insights on the future of distributed work.
They've also chosen a non-traditional career path with a focus on work/life balance and integration. These themes ripple through our broader research on independent workers.
And most of them are independent workers, which, of course, is one of the main areas we study.
We will continue to track and report on this topic. See the report for more details.
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