Manila ranks 7th on list of world’s top 10 remote work hubs

This photo taken on Jan. 29, 2019, shows a general view of the Manila skyline. (File photo by TED ALJIBE / Agence France-Presse)

MANILA, Philippines — Manila has been named one of the top 10 Global Remote Work Hubs, a recent survey by the work and travel platform Nomad List showed.

Nomad List ranked Manila as the 7th fastest-growing remote hub this year, joining six other Asian hubs in the top 10.

Malacañang on Tuesday welcomed the inclusion of Manila on the list.

“The Marcos government has been enticing businesses to come to the Philippines, considering the country’s young, highly skilled and English-speaking workforce,” the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said in a statement.

“The Philippines is also ideal for business due to its sustained economic growth rate, current bureaucratic reforms, and the administration’s ongoing thrust for infrastructure development and digitalization,” the PCO added.

The list was topped by Tokyo, Japan; followed by Da Nang, Vietnam; Seoul, South Korea; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Penang, also in Malaysia; Montevideo, Uruguay; Manila; Hanoi, Vietnam; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

From 2018 to 2022, Manila posted a 78-percent growth. For 2023, it recorded a 60-percent growth based on 10 months of data, while last year, it posted a 1,183-percent growth.

According to the Nomad List website, the work hubs were ranked by the growth rate of check-ins made to places by tens of thousands of Nomad List members using live data that analyzed 299,560 check-ins.

The growth numbers give travelers and workers an idea of the fastest-growing remote work hubs and also show the current rank on Nomad List so they can gauge the popularity of the place.

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‘Digital nomads’

Nomad List finds the best places in the world to live, work, and travel as a remote worker, collecting data points every second on thousands of cities around the world, from cost of living to temperature to safety.

It noted that remote work is on an “exponential trajectory” and has been growing fast “[as] thousands of destinations, from tiny surf villages to cosmopolitan mega cities, are now competing to attract remote workers.”

Founded by Dutch website developer Pieter Levels in 2014 with headquarters in Medellin, Colombia, Nomad List is dedicated to the rising trend of traveling remote workers, also called digital nomads.

“It lets people find the best places to go based on their preferences like internet speed, cost of living, weather and safety [and thousands more data points],” Levels said on his website.

He said Nomad List was built around his vision for the future of remote work “where I think billions of people in some form will work remotely from multiple countries/cities in the world while moving around to find their perfect place to live with the community of people they fit in.”