Next Wave of Digital Nomads?

The next wave of digital nomads could lead to nearly 1 billion people opting into that lifestyle.

August 5, 2024

By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP

Certainly there are those who were always inclined to live the jet-setting life. But in recent years, it’s become a lifestyle choice for many who at one point never considered it.

Entrepreneurship has also seen an uptick, ostensibly from a population that at one point never envisioned such a thing for themselves.

The Pandemic was the best of times and the worst of times. While the net outcome is decidedly bad economically, some things got the kick in the pants they needed to really take foot.

Fallout from the Pandemic

In no way am I diminishing the fallout. There was a lot of tragedy to go around. Businesses shut down left and right. People lost their livelihoods. Entire industries were turned on their ear: from supply chain, to tourism, to dining and entertainment.

Let’s be honest: that was a record transfer of wealth from the working class to a narrow cluster of wealthy people.

Inflation went through the roof, with no signs of slowing down. There was a massive cultural shift, and, suddenly, there’s two new wars on the horizon. How did that happen, and where did that come from? Regardless, the need for more debt and inflation persists.

The current US administration is claiming the US experienced the largest job growth in history. In actuality, it is only barely rebounding from the largest job loss in history just a few years ago. And that was only made possible after the restrictions were lifted.

Time to go!

So what did people do to get through the economic shut down? If they managed to keep their jobs, and worked in a white collar industry, then they worked remotely.

Remote work received a massive push forward. People who’d never done this before, suddenly had no choice. The commuting stopped, so the fuel costs dropped. People got time back with their families. People started making food at home rather than eating out.

Remote work offered new opportunities. We’d long missed the “15 days to flatten the curve” marker. And with things persisting as they did, people decided to move out of the expensive big cities, and relocate to cheaper, smaller cities or more affordable states.

The states that suffered the most, of course, were New York and California. The states that saw a the most newcomers were Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

Some even took the opportunity to leave the country entirely! They went on what were called “Work-cations”. They went to other countries for months at a time with their family. They worked as they normally did. But they also enjoyed living in a new country for longer than the typical vacation time typically allowed.

What if you lost your job?

If you lost your job, a few things could happen. There was the slim possibility of finding a new one. There was a surge in gig work too. People started picking up a bunch of smaller jobs rather than landing on just the one job. And then there was the option to start their own business.

When you’ve lost everything, what else have you got to lose? And I think that was what drove the numbers of new entrepreneurs through the roof!

I’m not saying they are all thriving now. But it snapped people out of an employment trance and had them taking a chance on themselves. The filings have consistently held above 5 million per year since 2020, which is encouraging!

Even if they ultimately went back to work as an employee. The point is, there are people who gave self-employment a shot who, under any other circumstances, would never have even tried. To be fair, there are people who are still on the entrepreneur track, too.

The first big wave of digital nomads!

If the work you were doing was portable, and your life where you were was unaffordable, moving was not the worst choice. But some folks took it one step further and just kept moving! They moved all over the US from one extended stay location to another. Or they took to an RV!

Others took that out of their home countries, to more affordable countries altogether! They moved around within new continents, between countries. So much so, that countries suffering from an obliterated tourism industry started offering up digital nomad visas, such as Spain, Costa Rica, and Bulgaria. It allowed people to stay longer than a tourism visa, but wasn’t a permanent residency.

Here are the stats for the exponential growth in digital nomads worldwide. This greatly coincides with the Pandemic era.

Heading into the Future

Companies tried to bring people back into the office, but the diaspora can’t be undone. People aren’t moving back from Oklahoma to New York! That’s not a thing. It’s especially not a thing with the interest rates being what they are. People moving from a San Diego shanty to a Nashville mansion at 3% aren’t selling to go back to the shanty at 7%.

Corporate real estate is struggling because “going to the office” is really not going back to the way it was. Frustrating as it may be for some, they appear to be outnumbered by those that just aren’t interested in laying out the time and money to go into an office.

The government made them figure it out, and they did. These businesses went along with it. They made their beds, and it’s time to lie in it.

Inflation is persisting. It’s getting harder and harder to live in places like the UK, Canada, and the US. Prices are going up, interest rates are up, debt is going up…

What does this mean heading in to the future then?

I think it’s fairly obvious. It’s the next wave of digital nomads. People are going to take their laptops and head out once again. The cost of living in Vietnam or Mexico versus the cost of living in the US or Canada sells itself!

Tech Report cites a different source that has the current global digital nomad population around 40 million rather than the aforementioned 35 million. But it goes on to predict that by 2030, that number will be closer to 60 million. Nomad List founder Pieter Level believes that number will be at 1 Billion by 2035.

The Pandemic got a lot of people over their insecurities toward entrepreneurship and relocation. And now you have a new generation of folks who see their prospects at home and think: “I’m never going to get ahead here.”

People are going to quit something. Some will quit themselves, which is unfortunate. Others will quit their jobs and their location for something better, and that is what the numbers really suggest.