Remote work is something many tech pros are interested in, and our most recent Dice Salary Survey shows why there’s good reason to ask your employer to allow you to work from home.

First, we’ll roll the clock back to October 2018, when we asked you via an anonymous survey which benefits mattered most to you. While we expected ‘health benefits’ to lead the way, those actually tied with ‘remote work.’ And those two outpaced 'stock options' and 'better job title' by a wide margin.

The 2019 Salary Survey tells us 73 percent of tech pros consider remote work an important perk, but only 49 percent report having it as an option from their employer. From the Salary Survey:

This 24 percent gap is the second-largest between a desired benefit and what employers broadly are offering, which ties into overall employee satisfaction; 55 percent of people who said they’re satisfied at their job have remote and flex options, whereas only 33 percent (who are said they’re dissatisfied with their job) have the benefit.

When we asked tech pros how often they’d like to work remotely, only two percent said ‘never.’ Double that number reported being unsure of their company policy for remote work (or that it wasn’t allowed, either by the company or for their specific role).

While two percent said they’d never work remotely, 23 percent said they were currently not allowed remote work. That’s a 21 percent delta; a lot of employers simply aren't giving their employees a chance to work from their couch.

About one-fifth (19 percent) of tech pros want to work remotely one-fifth of the time (one day per week), something only 12 percent report they can do today. Another one-fifth (21 percent) want the option for remote work full-time; again, only 12 percent currently have that option.

This desire to not commute coincides with another year of tech pro earnings showing very slight growth. Year-over-year, tech pro income hasn’t changed much in three full years: 2016 saw a 1.3 percent decline, while 2017 and 2018 showed slight upticks (0.7 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively) to bring us back to 2015 salary levels. We know skills are the best path forward to earn more money, but when your employer won’t budge on salary, or you find yourself at a point in your career where there’s not much more you can earn by jumping to a new job – ask for benefits such as remote work.