Digital Nomads in STEM Fleeing to Asia in Their Millions
STEM professionals are fast turning into digital nomads to escape a collapsing western economy. There were over 35 million digital nomads around the world in 2022 [1], while the digital nomad community’s economic value is now a staggering $787,000,000,000 per year [2]
The number of U.S. digital nomads nearly quadrupled during the pandemic and 71 percent plan to continue the digital nomad lifestyle for at least the next 2 to 3 years. So, what drives this?
Based on available data, I would argue that a watershed moment came when COVID19 ‘lockdown’ policies were imposed on First World populations. Libertarian intellectuals with laptops, passports and light on baggage are the canaries in the coalmine of economic health and they are fleeing the West’s frigid cold waters for warmer, more inviting Eastern climes.
Because, even as far back as June 2012, the BBC article’ Is the great digital-nomad workforce actually coming?’ posed the question:
‘Are we actually on the brink of remote workers scattering across the globe en masse – or are predictions of the new, great digital-nomad movement overblown?’
Enter the Age of the Digital Nomad – the facts
- The number of digital nomads from the U.S. nearly quadrupled during the pandemic (17.3 million in 2019 to 16.9 million in 2022) but has now leveled off at 17.3 million in 2023.
- The total number of digital nomads has ballooned to over 35 million, with 49% coming from the United States.
- 47% of digital nomads are in their 30s.
- 76% of American digital nomads are white, 18% are African-American, 8% are Hispanic, 4% are Asian, and 3% are of other ethnicity.
- 66% of digital nomads are traditional remote employees and 34% are independent workers — a shift caused by the pandemic-driven remote work boom.
- 49% of digital nomads earn the same salary (or more) than their prior office job.
- 45% of American digital nomads earn over $75,000 per year while enjoying a lower cost of living.
- 71% plan to continue the digital nomad lifestyle for at least the next 2 to 3 years.
- Only 24% of location-independent remote workers actually mix work and travel simultaneously.
- Most digital nomads travel slowly, with only 17% visiting more than 5 countries per year.
- Over half of digital nomads (52%) rated finding reliable wifi as one of the top challenges of the nomadic lifestyle.
- Only 30% of digital nomads report working over 40 hours per week.
- The number of van lifers grew to 3.1 million in 2022, making up 18% of American digital nomads.
Source: https://www.projectuntethered.com/digital-nomad-statistics/
Asymmetric Warfare in the Digital Age
In effect, digital nomads are modern foot soldiers for freedom largely unaware of their role in shaping a new multipolar planet. They are mostly aspiring, young and middle aged professionals who have few, if any familial ties. These ‘combatants’ are in a ‘cold’ conflict fought on the world wide web where hearts and minds are more readily swayed by harsh economic realities rather than the blood and guts tragically spilled in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Unlike the hot war of WW2 that decimated Europe, the new cold war ravishing Europe is less about wielding bombs and bullets and more about winning hearts and minds. The conflict is being fought between multipolarity (BRICS) versus the unipolarity of U.S. hegemony (backed by the UN, EU, WEF globalist axis of evil).
“The model of world order has changed dramatically in the postwar era from the bipolarity between the US and Soviet Russia that characterized the Cold War, to a period of unipolarity after the fall of Soviet Russia in 1989 when the US became the world’s sole superpower, to complex multipolarity following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008,” says M.A. Peters in The emerging multipolar world order: A preliminary analysis.
Doubts appear to be increasingly removed as according to a global poll by research and advisory firm Gartner, more than 80% of 127 company leaders surveyed said they plan to allow remote work at least part time post-COVID.
BBC admits ‘There’s never been more interest in digital nomadism –
“people who choose to embrace a location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle that allows them to travel and work remotely, anywhere in the Internet-connected world”.’
One study shows that in mid-2020, the digital-nomad population in the US exploded 50% from 2019, up to 10.9 million from 7.3 million. And, as more workers turn nomadic, the lifestyle has mainstreamed: telling your family or company you want to move around while you work might have drawn sceptical looks in the past, but the idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched now – especially as some companies are increasingly allowing their staff to work remotely indefinitely.
Robert Litchfield, associate professor of economics and business at Washington & Jefferson College, US, is the co-author of a book about digital nomads with Rachael Woldoff, professor of sociology at West Virginia University, US. They point out that any shift towards digital nomadism is in line with trends that emerged long before the pandemic: a survey of 15,000 Americans back in 2017 showed that 43% were already working remotely at least some of the time, a number that ticked up 4% from 2012.
Olga Hannonen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Finland who studies digital nomads says: “At the moment, being a digital nomad is a very Western phenomenon of people who can travel the world.”
Susan Lund, a partner at Washington, DC-based McKinsey & Company who researches labour, economic development and remote work tells us that based on McKinsey research, “60-70% of the workforce has zero opportunity” to work remotely at all. Most people left behind are
“cutting hair, they’re caring for patients, they’re in a manufacturing setting where you’re working machinery or in a laboratory working with specialised equipment”.
In another BBC article, ‘The new residency schemes inviting workers abroad’ we learn that a slew of non-first world nations are opening their doors to digital nomads by introducing tailor-made visa schemes or Digital Nomad Visa. As of June 2023 there are a reported 58 Countries With Digital Nomad Visas.
Like the ‘Brain Drain’ in recession-hit Britain from the 1950s to 1970s – it is the most skilled and successful workers who relocate to foreign shores. Case in point for today’s crop of emigrants is Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, He says he’ll work remotely and move from place to place every couple of weeks, residing in a new Airbnb accommodation.
Having become inured to constant tax hikes, crumbling public services and infrastructure and erosion of personal sovereignty many of us who earn our living online are looking to digital nomadism as an escape route to one world unelected socialism.
East replacing West
Few people understand the ramifications, or have grasped the need for change, better than former US Marine and geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic (‘New Atlas’) who has long seen how the military industrial complex has played a major role in destabilizing the global economy.
Berletic’s global macro geopolitical views on the New Cold War struggle between the East (e.g. Russia, China) and West (e.g. US, EU) affirmed his decision that southeast Asia should be his home.
The former US soldier is highly critical of western foreign policy and now prefers working remotely online from Bangkok, Thailand. He has 250,000+ Youtube subscibers and his global audience is growing fast. Berletic sees the Asian inflection of world capitalism and the consequences of the final overcoming of the legacy of the colonial world system, especially evident in the growing solidarity and expansion of BRICs and the G77.
As M.A. Peter writes,
“No one doubts that there has been a shift in the centre of economic gravity from the rich trans-Atlantic democracies to Asia that helps to define the rise of China within a dense network of bilateral trading relationships, with ASEAN as its largest trading partner. “
In a recent paper published by the RAND Corporation, a US policy think tank funded by, and working for the largest military and economic interests in the Western Hemisphere, fears of how technology may further erode the West’s technological, military and economic dominance
RAND published an article titled, “Four Ways 3D Printing May Threaten Security,” which while focusing specifically on computer-controlled manufacturing and in particular, 3D printing, admits that the west is losing control of less developed nations. The third world is rising and abandoning the US-European dominated international order becoming less dependent on Western corporations for technical expertise. Internet access is key. Superfast broadband connections prove that knowledge is power.
Rand even admits to fears over the end of globalization, claiming:
At the same time, the trade ties that have held together nations—incentivizing cooperation over conflict—could fray. A car company, for example, might print and assemble the parts it needs on site, rather than making the parts in one country, shipping them to another for assembly, and selling the final product in a third. A recent report by trade analysts at ING predicted that 3D printing could wipe out almost a quarter of cross-border trade by 2060. Those trade ties and supply chains, the RAND researchers noted, have contributed to a dramatic decrease in interstate war since World War II.
Digital nomadism among disaffected western intellectuals is not just a reaction against tyrannical globalist policies, but represents a sea change towards a great awakening for the need to reclaim personal and community identity.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”, sums it up neatly:
“The emergence of decentralized, advanced manufacturing is inevitable. Nations with realistic plans to usher in an orderly transition from traditional economics to a more localized future will reap the most benefits. Those who squander resources attempting to impede or even roll back the tide of technological change will be swept away by it. “
The COVID19 pandemic was a catalyst for action in the hearts and minds of free thinkers who began to understand that imposed globalism seems more akin to fascist Germany whereby conformity to central planning trumps personal freedoms, individuality, entrepreneurship.
Remote work has entered the mainstream and it is here to stay. Freethinkers and libertarians are voting with their feet and leaving the conformists behind to try to unravel the mess left by the military industrial complex and failed globalist aspirations.
References:
[1] Source: The Global Digital Nomad study conducted by ABrotherAbroad.com
[2] (Source: The Global Digital Nomad study conducted by ABrotherAbroad.com)
About the author: John O’Sullivan is CEO and co-founder (with Dr Tim Ball) of Principia Scientific International (PSI). John co-hosts TNT Radio’s Sky Dragon Slaying show with fellow PSI co-founder Joe Postma. He is a seasoned science writer and adept legal analyst who assisted Dr Ball in defeating world leading climate expert, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann in the multi-million-dollar ‘science trial of the century‘. O’Sullivan is credited as the visionary who formed the original ‘Slayers’ group of scientists in 2010 who then collaborated in creating the world’s first full-volume ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ debunking alarmist lies about carbon dioxide plus their follow-up climate book. His latest publication, ‘Slaying the Virus and Vaccine Dragon’ exposes dangerous mainstream medical group think and junk science.
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