1. Portugal at the top
Portugal ranked as the best country in the world for remote work, scoring high in all categories including climate, social life, low crime rate and relatively affordable cost of living. The attribution came from Momondo, which said that the southern European country also offers a visa for digital nomads, and many inhabitants have a high-level proficiency of English, which helps bridging the gap between the locals and the immigrants.
To create this index, Momondo analyzed 111 states and classified them based on 22 factors, distributed across six categories: cost of travel and accessibility; local prices; health and safety; remote working conditions; social life, and, of course, the weather. The countries where it is easier to combine remote work with leisure in free time were the ones that scored the most in these points.
2. Spain gets second place
Spain came in second, mainly because of the high number of cafés and restaurants per capita, along with fast internet, many co-working spaces and also offering visas for freelancers working remotely. In addition, it has an exuberant nightlife, open to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Romania ranks third, standing out for attractive prices on long-term rentals and food. Mauritius, Japan, Malta, Costa Rica, Panama, the Czech Republic and, finally, Germany follow.
3. Pandemic boosting remote work
The pandemic has radically changed the way we work. Remote work has become not only a necessity due to successive lockdowns, but for some, the favourite option. There were also many people who took advantage of this paradigm shift to move to another country without changing jobs.
“The number one thing that’s happened is that a lot of businesses and a lot of workers have found that remote work works better than they thought. You can see this in surveys of workers, you can see it in surveys of employers —basically everyone has figured out that this way of working is a lot more productive than they thought,“ said the economist Adam Ozimek in an interview to the World Economic Forum.
