Remote work is going global – and the UAE is positioning itself as the place to do it from

Remote work is no longer a temporary workplace trend. As professionals increasingly seek countries offering legal clarity, flexible visas and economic stability, the UAE is positioning itself as one of the world’s most attractive destinations for location-independent workers.

The UAE has quietly built one of the most remote-work friendly regulatory environments in the world. The country, in fact, ranks first regionally and fourth globally among preferred destinations for remote work, according to a 2025 PwC report. 

Meanwhile, Cisco’s 2025 Global Hybrid Work study, which surveyed 1,000 respondents in the UAE as part of a 21-market global analysis, found that 80% of the country’s employers and 69% of employees positively received their organization’s current hybrid work policy. 

Nearly three-quarters of UAE employers also stressed retention rates had increased as a result of their current office policies, and 86% said they recognized the ability to work remotely as important for retention – one of the highest figures globally, behind only Indonesia and India. 

That positioning isn’t accidental. UAE labour law recognizes remote work as a legitimate arrangement: under Article 17(6) of the Decree-Law, employers retain the right to set specific working hours or require core availability for employees working remotely, though the arrangement must be mutually agreed upon and stipulated contractually. 

A 2022 cabinet resolution explicitly defines remote work, and Abu Dhabi and Dubai have gone further: offering one-year remote work visas to nomad workers earning a minimum of $3,500 USD (AED12,856). 

The UAE’s bet is that this clarity will attract a specific kind of worker; one who already exists in large numbers and is actively looking for somewhere to land. At least 330 million individuals work remotely worldwide, according to data from FMC Group, and that population is growing fastest in economies where local pay hasn’t kept pace with the cost of living. 

Indonesia is the clearest example of why. 

The push abroad

Indonesian graphic designer Dan, who chose to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, has been working remote jobs for more than two years. He tried working at Indonesian companies for a few years before shifting to remote work, starting with a job teaching English to students abroad.

“I was mostly teaching people in South America. Oftentimes they would show up after work and I would be teaching them, which for us in Indonesia would have been maybe 8 or 9 a.m.,” he said while in conversation with The Brew News.

He now works as a graphic designer at an agency that hires remote workers, recruiting mostly designers from Asia as well as the U.S. and the U.K.

Several factors explain his preference for working with a company abroad rather than at home. Aside from his disability and introverted personality, Dan cited the state of the Indonesian currency; the USD to Indonesian Rupiah rate climbed to roughly Rp18,209 in early June 2026 – the strongest the dollar has been against the rupiah in 28 years, aside from a brief spike during the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis.

“Being paid in a stronger currency is another benefit. That is really something for me. It’s very worth it in my opinion for the amount of effort that I put in it. So it’s good pay by my standards,” said Dan.

His salary gets auto-converted into rupiah, but he’s working on getting his firm to wire the money in a different currency to protect its value. Asked whether he would consider switching to an Indonesian company in the future, Dan seemed uncertain.

“If things continue down the path they’re currently going, I’m just going to stick to working for overseas companies from here. It is really just untenable for my personal needs to be working for a national company, whether that’s in-person or from home,” he admitted. 

A mismatch, not a shortage

Deniey Adi Purwanto, an economist at the think tank Institute for Development of Economics and Finance, said remote work took off globally during the pandemic, as employees confined to their homes learned to work over Zoom and messaging platforms. 

Conditions have mostly returned to normal since, but the infrastructure and habits stuck, further opening the door to work opportunities beyond national borders. 

“Remote working is actually a global trend. The only issue is which segment they’re working in. In other countries, job seekers take remote jobs as a way to increase their opportunities for higher income,” Purwanto told The Brew News. 

“In Indonesia, there’s still a dualism; some are looking for higher income, while others are simply looking for any sort of work they can get because they haven’t been able to find formal employment,” he added.

Indonesia’s unemployment rate in February 2026 was down 0.08% from the same period last year, according to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Purwanto argues, then, that the problem does not lie in a shortage of jobs but a cost of living that has outpaced local pay. He also pointed to a skills mismatch: companies abroad are often looking for exactly the skill set Indonesian workers have to offer, while the domestic market isn’t. 

“There is a mismatch between what the industry needs and what is being offered. What [skilled workers] are offering is not what the Indonesian economy or labor market is looking for right now. This ultimately leads to a suboptimal mismatch, both economically and from the company’s perspective,” the economist explained. 

Why companies are hiring across borders

Stella Martini, admin manager at Gutenhag, a firm producing long-form content such as annual reports and books, said that although the company is based in Singapore, it has never once considered hiring Singaporeans. The majority of its employee base is, in fact, based in Indonesia, with a smaller share in Thailand and the U.S. 

“It’s an advantage because, honestly, Indonesians are less expensive than Singaporeans. And for Indonesian designers, the benefits they receive are more than enough compared to having to work a regular job locally,” said Martini, who is also Indonesian.

Martini added that it’s increasingly difficult to find designers who can also communicate fluently in English, but she keeps recruiting Indonesian talent because she trusts the quality and reliability of the work. 

“I hear that finding work is really hard nowadays. They say that salaries are quite low. So for those who work remotely, with just internet access and their own laptop, they can earn more than if they went to an office,” she said.

On the other side of the globe, Pablo Miller, founder and CEO of Remoti – a workforce infrastructure firm helping enterprises build remote teams across Latin America – said companies are now relocating their entire business functions to distributed teams “while maintaining the same culture, productivity, and performance standards.”  

He further described a “follow-the-sun” model to The Brew News, whereby companies coordinate across time zones to operate for nearly 24 hours a day. 

“For European and U.S. companies, Latin America offers the ability to build teams that collaborate in real time while also extending operational coverage beyond traditional working hours,” he said.

Where the UAE fits in

As remote work shifts from a pandemic-era workaround to a permanent feature of how global companies staff themselves, the countries that make it legally simple and financially attractive to work from – rather than just work for – stand to capture a growing, currency-driven talent flow. 

That’s the opportunity the UAE is angling for; and by its own numbers, the country still has room to grow into it. Despite having high approval scores, the country’s actual hybrid-work rate sits below the global average at 36%, versus 44% across the 21 markets Cisco surveyed. 

And, reading alongside the strong retention and satisfaction figures, that gap suggests a market that hasn’t yet saturated its remote-work potential so much as one still building toward it – with the policy groundwork largely already in place. 

Workers like Dan are not choosing where to live based on office culture; they’re choosing based on currency stability, visa access, and how much friction stands between them and a paycheck denominated in dollars. 

On that front, the UAE has spent the past several years systematically removing friction. Its virtual work visa, for instance, asks only proof of remote employment with a company outside the country and the minimum income threshold – no local sponsor, no UAE employer, and no change to who the applicant actually works for. 

Layered on top is a labour law that treats remote work not as an exception requiring special pleading, but as a defined, contractible employment model with the same legal footing as full-time or part-time work. 

Converting that policy clarity into a larger share of the global remote workforce means competing on the same pool of workers others around the world are increasingly organizing into “follow-the-sun” operations. But the UAE isn’t competing with Latin America or Southeast Asia for the same jobs – those workers’ employers are not going anywhere. 

Instead, the country is competing for those workers’ choice of where to physically be while doing them. That’s a narrower contest, and arguably an easier one to win. 

This article is published in collaboration between The Brew News and Espacio

Disclaimer:All views and opinions expressed in The Brew Opinion – our opinion section – are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the off