Digital nomads are springing up like mushrooms.
Even during the current pandemic, their numbers are rising at an incredible rate.
Let’s have a look at the statistics of this emerging tribe of people.
With a few hard facts at our fingertips, we will be able to better understand who they are, what they do, and how they live.
How many digital nomads are there?
According to the most recent report by MBOpartners, there are currently 15.5 million digital nomads from the US alone.
Since the US population accounts for 4.2% of the world population, this allows for a rough projection of approximately 369 million digital nomads globally.
Of course, this extrapolation relies on the assumption that digital nomads from all over the world are cutting the ties to their home bases at the same rate as workers in the US do.
Based on data gathered by Nomad List this, however, is not the case.
Their statistics suggest that US workers are widely overrepresented in the digital nomad space.
This could be the result of various factors, like better education opportunities, being native speakers of the English language, or the higher wages compared to Second and Third World countries.
When factoring in the distribution of nationalities as observed by Nomad List, the projection changes from 369 million digital nomads to just 31.6 million digital nomads globally.
Needless to mention, this is a dramatic downwards correction.
However, it is necessary to keep in mind that the data gathered by Nomad List is still highly selective.
Nomad List is clearly geared towards established, English-speaking digital nomads, who are willing to pay to be part of the Nomad List community.
And all their data relies on the makeup of exactly this community.
As such, I strongly suspect their data to be skewed towards financially situated US and UK nationals.
Which consequently means, the real number of digital nomads should most likely lie somewhere between 31.6 million and 369 million.
Yes, I know, this is a large field.
Unfortunately, the currently available data does not permit a closer approximation.
Is the nomad community growing?
Another very interesting point about the report by MBOpartners is the incredible rate at which the digital nomad community is expanding.
MBOpartners started releasing their digital nomadism-oriented research reports in 2018.
Since then, the number of digital nomads has increased by a staggering 223%.
There are now over three times as many US workers defining themselves as digital nomads than just three years ago.
The following diagram shows how the numbers of digital nomads have been exploding over the past few years:
How old are digital nomads?
The average digital nomad is 34 years old. Digital nomads are predominantly millennials between the age of 26 and 41. Only about 12% of nomads are older than 57 years.
The MBOpartners’ report found most digital nomads to be between the age of 26 and 41.
Only 21% of nomads are below the age of 26, and 12% are above the age of 57.
67% of all digital nomads are either Millennials or Gen Xers.
The following pi charts show how the generational makeup of the digital nomad community has changed over the last three years.
Nomad List’s age data is more granular, than the report by MBOpartners.
However, there are significant differences between these two studies.
According to Nomadlist, there are only 4% of digital nomads below the age of 26.
And only roughly 8% of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers combined. As opposed to the 35% found by MBOpartners.
This is another instance, that highlights how biased Nomad List’s data potentially is.
Additionally, it is worth noting that their statistics do not include any data for nomads of the age of 45 and upwards.
Based on Nomad List’s age distribution, I calculated the average digital nomad age to be 34 years.
This result is very much in line with MBOpartners’ findings of Millennials accounting for the biggest part of the digital nomad community.
And it’s close to the results of this – slightly dated – Fiverr study, which found 32 to be the average age of their sample of digital nomads.
Are digital nomads satisfied with their lifestyle?
The MBOpartners report is very clear when it comes to the topic of work and lifestyle satisfaction.
Digital nomads are overwhelmingly satisfied.
Since 2019, the percentage of highly satisfied digital nomads has risen from an already whopping 79% to an even slightly more impressive 85%.
In 2021, only six percent of digital nomads have declared themselves to be dissatisfied.
Are digital nomads satisfied with their income?
Most nomads seem to be satisfied or even highly satisfied with the amount of money they make.
In 2019, the percentage of nomads who claimed to be satisfied was 44%.
Additionally, 35% of nomads expressed to be highly satisfied with their income.
That is an overall total of 79% of digital nomads being satisfied with their financial situation.
By 2021 the overall satisfaction did not change significantly among nomads.
However, even more digital nomads did claim to be highly satisfied (42%) than to be just satisfied (37%) with their finances.
How much do digital nomads make?
The results of the study conducted by Fiverr in 2018 suggest, that 57% of digital nomads make less than $50.000 per year.
It also found that only 10% of digital nomads make more than $100.000 annually.
The following diagram gives a more detailed view of the income data gathered by Fiverr’s study.
These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. And not just because of their age.
In general, I have to say, income is a difficult topic. There is simply not much reliable data around.
When comparing various studies, I found significant differences between them.
The data compiled by Nomad List, for example, is definitely skewed towards very well-payed nomads.
Not only this, but their income data also reflects the earnings of only ca. 550 individuals.
My go-to study by MBOpartners, on the other hand, could potentially offer more reliable data.
However, they did not bother to make most of their income data publicly available.
In my research, I found the best study to answer this question to be the Fiverr study – despite being a little dated by now.
However, you should still expect these numbers to deviate somewhat from the contemporary situation. I plan to update these statistics, as soon as new and more reliable data becomes available.
How much of their time do digital nomads spend working?
According to a study from 2018, 33% of digital nomads have problems of shutting off at the end of the day. That is one third of nomads prone to overworking, and possibly facing burn-out over the long term.
However, it is hard to come by reliable data about the actual hours nomads spend on their work.
Aside from one small poll from 2021, I was only able to find a similarly small study conducted by Flexjob, which I found to be based on rather biased data (you can read more on this at the end of this article).
The poll from 2021 found that 19.4% of digital nomads work less than 20 hours per week.
At the same time, 39.5% of nomads have claimed to work more than 40 hours per week.
In between these two groups are about 26.5% of nomads situated. They commonly work from 30 to 40 hours per week.
Considering the facts that two thirds of nomads are employees now, and one third of nomads are prone to overwork themselves, these numbers (two thirds of nomads working more than 30 hours per week) seem realistic.
Nonetheless, since this survey’s sample size was very small, you should still take these numbers with a grain of salt.
In what kinds of jobs are digital nomads working?
Digital nomads are most likely to work in IT jobs.
MBOpartners also kept track of the various professions digital nomads have engaged in over the last couple of years.
In recent years there has been a significant uptick in digital nomads working all sorts of IT jobs (e.g., mobile app developers, administrators, web developers, …).
Back in 2019, digital nomads were evenly distributed across a number of fields such as consulting and research (13%), sales and marketing (13%), IT (11%), creative services (9%), and so on.
However, since 2021, one in five digital nomads works a job in IT (19%). Other formerly popular fields have dropped off slightly.
Jobs in consulting and research are down to 8%, sales and marketing dropped to 8% as well, only creative services remained more or less stable at 10% in 2021.
Other common nomad jobs include education (9%) and finance/accounting (8%).
How is COVID-19 affecting the digital nomad movement?
The pandemic has forced many regular office workers into their home offices. This new-found location-independence has fueled the growth of employed digital nomads in particular.
Pre-pandemic, approximately 3.2 of 7.3 million US nomads were traditional employees.
This number rose to 6.3 million in 2020 and further increased to roughly 10.2 million employees in 2021.
In comparison, the number of independent workers in the digital nomad space rose from a pre-pandemic level of 4.1 million to 4.6 million in 2020 and finally to roughly 5.5 million in 2021.
This means, over the last two years the makeup of the digital nomad community shifted from 43.8% of employees, and 56.2% independent workers to 64.5% of employees and 35.5% independent workers.
The rise of traditional employees within the digital nomad community also affected the shares of part-time workers vs. full-time workers.
In 2018, 54% of nomads considered themselves to be full-time workers.
Over the course of the next few years, this share’s size rose to 71% in 2021.
The pandemic did not only increase the number of digital nomads, and affected the shares of employed nomads compared to independent nomads.
It also changed the age distribution among nomads.
In 2019, Baby Boomers accounted for 27% of all nomads. This changed rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020 their share fell to 17%. And in 2021 only about 12% of digital nomads have still been from the Baby Boomer-generation.
Given how older generations are at higher risk to contract severe cases of COVID, this downwards trend should not come as a surprise. Many older nomads preferred to settle down for the time being and wait for the pandemic to be over.
As soon as the global COVID-19 crisis has been resolved, many expect to see an uptick in the numbers of older digital nomads.
What are the main reasons for digital nomads to quit their lifestyle?
According to the MBOpartners report, the top three reasons for digital nomads to quit their nomadic ways are:
- being exhausted from too much traveling
- full-time traveling being too expensive
- the endless travel planning became too challenging
Other frequently mentioned reasons include:
- a general sense of loneliness
- difficulties matching job expectations with full-time travel
- missing loved ones
Apropos, are you unsure if you could handle the loneliness the nomadic life entails?
Then maybe our article on this topic will prove helpful to you.
How reliable are all these studies?
Multiple times throughout writing this article, I had to compare the data of different studies.
Most notably, the recent report by MBOpartners, and the data aggregated by Nomad List.
But which of them has the more reliable data?
Which study was conducted with a proper methodology and produced the higher quality results?
Since the data by Nomad List is solely based on the makeup of their community – which is a relatively select group – their data appears to be not very representative of the real makeup of the digital nomad space.
Complicating the situation, their statistics are based on varying amounts of data.
For example, as of writing this, the data of their nomad age distribution is based on ca. 1,000 individuals.
However, their data on gender distribution is based on 12,500 individuals.
And their income data is – as previously already stated – based on solely 550 individuals.
Thus, it is necessary to evaluate each statistic individually to see how reliable this data potentially could be.
MBOpartners on the other hand, questioned 6240 American digital nomads and weighted the results to better reflect the US demographics.
Simply due to the larger sample size, their data on income and age distribution should be much more reliable.
However, since their results are supposed to reflect the US demographics, it is difficult to draw global conclusions from them.
To be honest, it is incredible how bad some studies, which aim to investigate the digital nomad phenomenon, truly are.
For example – and already hinted at, I encountered a study by Flexjob, that was conducted in 2018.
Their study found that digital nomads are predominantly females (70%) and that less than one third are men (30%).
Around the same time, MBOpartners also conducted one of their studies.
Their 2018 report describes the makeup of the digital nomad community as 69% male and 31% female.
Yeah…
Two studies claiming more or less the exact opposite of each other. That’s not good.
Flexjob says, they based their study on a sample of more than 500 digital nomads.
The 2018 report by MBOpartners does not specify their sample size for this year.
However, in the following years (2019 to 2021) MBOpartners stated to have interviewed between 3,500 and 6,200 US digital nomads for each of their studies.
Given their usual minimal sample size is still seven times larger than the sample size of Flexjob’s study, I am fairly certain MBOpartners’ results have been closer to the truth.
In fact, a third study conducted by Fiverr in 2018 supports MBOpartners’ findings.
Fiverr’s study evaluated responses from almost 3,800 digital nomads and found 63% of nomads to male and 37% to be female.
While these numbers do not match up perfectly with MBOpartners’ results, they are still strongly opposing Flexjob’s results.
And another point speaks against the quality of Flexjob’s study.
Their results indicate that 61% of digital nomads are married, while 39% are unmarried.
Even though there is no data from 2018 publicly available, recent data from Nomad List (sample size of ca. 3,500 nomads) suggests that 66% of digital nomads are actually single and only 34% are in a relationship.
And, of course, “in a relationship“ does not automatically mean “married“.
Even with three years of time in between these two studies, it is hard to imagine such a dramatic shift towards singleness among nomads.
To me, this puts all the other figures gathered by Flexjob’s study also into question.
Which has been the reason for me not to include any of their data in this article.
