LinkedIn: “Jess Lupo loves Orlando, and not just because of the warm, sunny climate. It’s her old college town, and that means lots of friends from her days at the University of Central Florida are nearby.The job scene, however, is a little trickier, especially for ambitious college graduates like her. Orlando’s biggest employer is Disney World. The rest of the local economy tilts heavily toward relatively low-paying jobs in leisure and hospitality.  For Lupo and many other Floridians, the solution is clear. Stay in the Sunshine State, where housing costs “don’t break the bank,” she explains. But find an out-of-state job that’s exciting, pays well, and can be done anywhere, amid this “boom in remote work.” Fresh data from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team provides two important new insights about the way the rise of remote work — initially dictated by 2020’s pandemic restrictions — is reshaping the U.S. economy.  For starters, remote work opportunities as of August were capturing 30.2% of all applications to paid U.S. job postings on LinkedIn. There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence of remote work’s rise, but the LinkedIn data makes it possible to see just how substantial this rise has been. August’s remote-application activity turns out to be more than triple the rate of 9.8% in August 2020. It’s up nearly 10-fold from remote work’s mere 2.8% share in January 2020, before COVID-19 hit.  What’s less well-recognized, and every bit as intriguing, is the degree to which certain cities, chiefly but not exclusively in the Sunbelt, have become hotspots for people seeking remote work, as seen in the chart below.  The chart above covers the 12-month period through August 2021. During that span, the overall national rate for remote-job applications on LinkedIn was 21.3%…”