MW Would you rather make $120K working from home or $240K being in an office every day? Here's what people are saying.
By Weston Blasi
The latest stage in the remote work vs. in-office debate sees people arguing on TikTok and Reddit over whether to take a remote job paying half as much as a fully in-office gig
$240,000 vs $120,000: Here's how much of a pay cut people are willing to take to work remotely.
Would you rather have a job paying $120,000 a year that lets you work remotely, or one earning $240,000 - but you'd have to come into the office every day?
People are pretty divided over that question.
Debates over which of these job offers is more attractive for workers have been swirling on social media for weeks. Videos diving into the discussion have drawn over millions of views on TikTok, and thousands of comments have emerged on Reddit (RDDT) threads featuring people debating why one side is better than the other.
"Work for $240K. Invest most of it and retire super early," one user suggested.
"Stay at home. Find more volunteer opportunities and have time for my hobbies," another user said.
The intense debate shows just how many people now value working remotely, which rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many workers adapted to work-from-home lifestyles while nonessential businesses and offices were closed in 2020 and 2021. And even though some companies have pushed for a return to the office in the years since, millions of Americans - about 20% of private salary and wage workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics - were still working from home for at least some of their hours as of April 2025, while just under 10% were working remotely every day.
Though these social-media conversations highlight the more extreme sides of the remote work versus in-office debate, several surveys show a clearer picture of what most Americans would actually prefer when it comes to their work situation. And money is just one figure in the overall equation of what makes employees happy now.
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How many people want to work from home?
The remote versus in-office tug-of-war is still happening more than five years after COVID closed down the country, and it's playing out in real time.
"This is just an ongoing part of the workplace culture wars," Jim Link, chief human-resources officer at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), told MarketWatch. "There are so many factors that employers and workers are wrestling with on any given day. This is just one of them."
In various surveys, Americans have stated that they prefer remote or hybrid work - the latter seeing them split some days in the office and some days at home - to fully in-person work.
Gallup's workplace research shows a majority of remote-capable workers would prefer flexibility: 54% favor a hybrid schedule and 37% want to work fully from home, while just 9% prefer full-time office work. And even among fully on-site employees, nearly half would choose some remote work, including 37% who want hybrid schedules and 11% who want to be fully remote.
See also: Younger workers know being remote has drawbacks, but they don't care. Here's why.
How big of a pay cut are people willing to take to work remotely?
It's clear that workers who are able to work remotely or hybrid tend to prefer that option over in-person work. But an emerging question is just how much are they willing to sacrifice for that flexibility. And while taking a pay cut to work from home has been suggested before, the latest viral question of a person pondering two job offers - one that pays $120,000 to work from home, and another to work in-person for $240,000 - is one of the bigger spreads that Link has seen so far.
"The willingness to trade pay for flexibility [usually] appears to be in the 5% to 7% range, not in the 25%-plus range," Link said. By those estimates, a 7% pay cut on $240,000 would be $16,000 - a fraction of the six-figure loss suggested in the hypothetical.
While this viral exercise is extreme, Link noted that some workers may consider a small pay cut to work remotely as a fair trade. This can include caregivers or parents, who are better able to balance their work and caregiving responsibilities. Workers with disabilities or specific work accommodations could also enjoy a better quality of life with remote work. And a third group consists of professionals engaged in geographic arbitrage - people who secured remote positions in lower cost-of-living areas, deliberately bypassing the marginally higher salaries typically found in expensive metro areas.
Deloitte's 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that some of the reasons that workers valued remote or hybrid work were: having a better work-life balance to spend time with loved ones (cited by 20% of Gen Z members and 28% of millennials); helping save money on commutes and work attire (cited by 22% of Gen Z and 27% of millennials); increased productivity (cited by 18% of Gen Z and 23% of millennials); and benefits for their overall mental health (cited by 54% of Gen Z and 59% of millennials).
Link added that tech workers seem the most willing to bypass higher salaries in exchange for that work-from-home flexibility. In a 2025 survey of nearly 1,400 U.S. tech workers, respondents said they would be willing to give up about 25% of their pay for an identical job offering partially or fully remote work instead of requiring full-time, in-person attendance. The survey was conducted by researchers at UCLA, Harvard University and Brown University.
Research also shows that America's youngest workers, Gen Z, are the ones most willing to accept lower pay in exchange for better work-life balance.
Of course, no research has shown that workers are willing to take 50% pay cuts to work remotely, like the viral videos suggest. But anecdotally, some people have said they've already made this decision.
One content creator posting under the name Mckenzie Mack on TikTok said she's a tech worker making $118,000 a year working fully remote, and she's turned down job offers that would have compensated her as much as $250,000 because "working remote is not something I'm willing to compromise on." She cited the money she saves by not having to drive to work, and being able to make lunch from home, as two key reasons supporting her decision.
On the other hand, TikToker Rai Tryna, 26, said he would take the extra money "no question," especially while he's still young and single and doesn't have child-care responsibilities. Tryna, who currently works from home, added: "Why would you not take the career that would make you so much money?"
What's next?
While mass remote work has only been around for a few years, many expect some form of it to stick around. Yet swings in the labor market may change that; the current low-hire, low-fire economy has many Americans worried about work, with job security one of their biggest financial concerns heading into the new year.
"When the unemployment rate ticks up, employers get the advantage," Link said. "There is a concept around job hugging, [in] which people are hanging on to what they have, regardless of whether it's full-time in office or full-time remote."
In the years following the pandemic, the U.S. experienced a labor shortage - giving employees more leverage in negotiations and allowing them to be selective in the jobs they took, while maximizing perks like working from home.
But now? "Completely different story," Link said. "Workers had the upper hand in the labor market, but today is more balanced, and perhaps more skewed toward employers."
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-Weston Blasi
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January 09, 2026 10:21 ET (15:21 GMT)
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