Earlier this year, the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released its official findings after surveying 671,552 businesses to give the most accurate picture available of the future of work. The results are worth studying at length, but if you’re looking for a brief summary, it’s this: Remote work is here to stay, and it has far wider and more far-reaching implications than anyone had previously imagined.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the changes brought by the global COVID-19 pandemic, you probably didn’t need comprehensive stats to tell you any of this. And if you’ve been living and working in Latin America, where these changes are occurring at a much faster pace, you’d be even more convinced. Because what we call “remote work” isn’t just about replacing your office desk with a perch on the couch, where you can work without the hassle of a long commute or other necessary evils. Remote work is about restructuring pretty much everything about life today, including some major socioeconomic realities that have, for centuries, fashioned the way we do business worldwide. Like immigration.

Not so long ago, people moved from one place to another in search of economic opportunities, bidding their homelands and families adieu and moving to America, Europe, and anywhere else where higher-paying jobs awaited.

These days, courtesy of remote work, you can be a part of a team working for a Fortune 100 company without ever leaving your community in, say, Mexico, Argentina, or Uruguay. This new development likely will have a considerable impact not only on local economies in Latin America but on the United States as well.

WELCOME TO E-MIGRATION

Call it e-migration: In recent years, those of us in the tech industry have seen a massive surge in the number of leading American companies looking south of the border for software developers and engineers. How massive? My own company, BairesDev, noticed that demand for Latin American software engineers working on AI projects this month alone had surged twelvefold, a stunning stat. Google, Pinterest, Salesforce, Adobe—everywhere you turn these days, you’re likely to find that many of the most innovative American companies are entrusting some of their essential projects to teams based out of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere.
American companies, of course, have always outsourced their business, as anyone stateside who has ever called a helpline (only to speak to a person in India) surely knows. But the surge of corporations turning to Latin America for critical functions such as software development suggests something new is afoot.

We’re living in the golden age of nearshoring: Rather than rely on workers who reside half the world away or promote immigration to the United States, which is complicated, employers are relying on teams nearer to American shores, especially in places like Latin America. How popular is nearshoring? Lightcast recently reported that large North American employers have increased remote workers from South America by 70% in the last three years.

WHY IS LATIN AMERICA IN SUCH A PRIVILEGED POSITION?

Latin America is in such a privileged position partly because of its culture. Tech professionals from the region come from environments where thinking creatively, coming up with new solutions, and experimenting when necessary are encouraged, making them natural fits for the fast-moving and irreverent tech sector. They also tend to have strong “soft skills,” which often means that they have a unique degree of adaptability and, by way of having a different set of experiences culturally, are able to introduce innovative levels of problem-solving skills, and creative approaches to their work. This isn’t just a side note: It makes interactions between American companies and their Latin American team members feel like a partnership, not merely a transaction. That’s a major departure from the standard outsourcing norms.

More important, there’s the skillset and investment. Consider the numbers: While just over one-half of Latin Americans had internet access in 2017, four years later that number has shot past the two-third mark, making the region one of the most rapidly connected in the world. This investment translates into more skilled workers. On average, American universities graduate less than 50,000 software engineers each year (2017 data); Mexico and Brazil combined, however, turn out a whopping 605,000 software engineers annually, a pace that reflects, in part, the robust investments by local Latin American governments in technological education and innovation. This, perhaps, helps explain why, last year, the number of foreign companies looking to hire employees in Latin America spiked by 156%, or why venture capital investment in the region doubled annually every year since 2016.

THE FUTURE OF IMMIGRATION 

Which brings us back to the future of immigration.

In 2017, not that long ago, there were only two unicorns in Latin America, companies valued at more than a billion dollars. Four years later, that number spiked to 34. As of 2022, it’s at about 50. This means more investment, more growth, more muscular economies, more markets for more products—in short, more of the American Dream for everyone, in North and South America alike. No packing of suitcases, leaving loved ones, and trekking across the globe is necessary.

We have remote work to thank for all of that. Economic opportunity has always driven industrious young men and women to leave their homes and try their luck elsewhere. With new technologies, new labor arrangements, new opportunities, and new rewards, many no longer have to. That’s something to celebrate.