A Third of Digital Nomads Work Abroad Without Their Boss’s OK

Expats

Digital nomads used to be freelancers who answered to nobody, and today more than a third of them work abroad without their employer’s formal consent.

The figure comes from MBO Partners, a workforce consultancy that surveys American remote workers each year. Thirty-six percent of them operate without formal employer consent.

That would once have gone unrecorded. The countries these people live in have started keeping better records.

Who digital nomads actually are now

The stereotype is a freelance designer with a laptop and no fixed address. The data describe someone rather different.

Among American nomads, salaried employees outnumber independent workers by roughly eleven million to seven million. As SQ Magazine reports, citing the same consultancy, independents actually shrank over the last year.

Their number fell from seven point nine million to seven point three million, a decline of about seven percent. Rising costs and older workers leaving the lifestyle are given as reasons.

The growth is therefore on the employee side. People with payroll numbers, tax withholding and employment contracts are the ones packing laptops.

The cohort is no longer small. Eighteen and a half million Americans described themselves as digital nomads in 2025, roughly twelve percent of the country’s workforce.

Nearly nine in ten of them report using artificial intelligence in their daily work. Whatever else has changed, the job itself has become more portable.

Why the paperwork is catching up

An employee has a contract, and a contract usually says something about where the work is done. A freelancer answering to clients has no such document to contradict.

That is the difference consent turns on, and why more than a third of nomads lacking it is worth noticing. This newspaper is not offering tax advice, and the specific consequences depend on the contract and the country.

Immigration policy is formalising around the cohort, in EY’s phrase. The consultancy devoted its quarterly immigration briefing in March to remote workers.

Europe switched on its Entry/Exit System on the tenth of April. It records the exact day a traveller arrives and the exact day they leave.

What this means in Latin America

The region’s own rules already run on day counts. Cross roughly a hundred and eighty-three days in a year and most countries here will treat you as a tax resident, whatever your visa says.

Costa Rica’s remote-worker permit runs a year and can be renewed once, but only if the holder was physically present for at least eighty days of the first year. Presence is a condition, not an afterthought.

Panama’s equivalent is a short-stay permit rather than a residency path, and the country does not tax income earned abroad. Those two facts pull in opposite directions for someone planning to stay.

Immigration permission and tax residency are separate tests. A permit that lets you stay does not decide who taxes you.

The region suits an American employee particularly well. Most of Latin America shares or borders American time zones, so a working day here looks identical to one at home.

That is precisely the advantage the region markets to remote workers. The same feature makes an undisclosed arrangement easy to sustain.

The lesson from Portugal

Portugal ran a tax regime that drew more than two thousand six hundred remote workers on its nomad visa. It closed the scheme in early 2024.

Nobody who moved for the tax break got a vote on ending it. A tax regime is a policy rather than a contract.

Colombia offers a live illustration of how fast the ground moves. This newspaper reported yesterday that the decree setting its nomad-visa income floor has been suspended by a court, and that almost every published guide to the requirement, including two of our own, states a figure that is wrong.

That is a visa rule, not a tax rule, but the lesson carries. Anyone choosing a base on the strength of a published threshold should verify it against the government rather than a listicle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do digital nomads need employer permission?

It depends on the contract, but more than a third of American nomads do not have it. The relevant document is the employment contract, which usually says something about where the work is performed.

Is the freelancer nomad disappearing?

Shrinking rather than vanishing. Independent workers fell by roughly six hundred thousand in a year while the salaried cohort kept growing, which inverts the picture most people carry.

What should a remote worker check first?

Two calendars, not one. Count the days that trigger tax residency in the host country, and read what your employment contract says about where the work is performed.