Big work-from-home bust in South Africa

New internal migration data for South Africa shows that the ‘zoom town’ trend of locals moving to smaller towns to work remotely is a big bust.

Instead, when South Africans look to semigrate, their focus is squarely on going metropolitan for work and job security—and Cape Town is the most favoured destination.

This is one of the key findings of the latest Wise Move 2025 Migration report, which tracked the relocation data of thousands of moves over the past year.

Wise Move cofounder and CEO Chante Venter said the report’s data uncovers the patterns and trends in where families are moving and why, particularly after a fairly turbulent period during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The overall migration trends reveal that, while Gauteng has a high volume of internal migration, it saw a massive net loss of residents in 2024 of -20.1%.

The group said that many people move to Gauteng in the hopes of finding jobs and launching careers but ultimately move on.

The Western Cape, meanwhile, has the largest inter-province gain, with 32.4% of all moves heading to the Cape.

The province is drawing a large number of affluent people, and they’re heading to Cape Town.

People moving from Johannesburg and Pretoria to the Western Cape accounted for a combined 48% of all inter-provincial moves.

“This trend highlights the magnetic pull of the Western Cape’s coastal lifestyle, economic opportunities and quality of life,” Wise Move said.

Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis revealed that over 100,000 people had moved to the City of Cape Town over the past two years, adding that around 80% of these residents had come from Gauteng.

Work-from-home bust

One of the more interesting trends in the data is that the work-from-home “zoom town” trend hyped up over the past few years is a bust.

While some of the semigrants over the past year moved to smaller towns, the vast majority headed to metropolitan areas.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses and workers got accustomed to working remotely amid lockdowns.

Once offices opened up again, company policies underwent seismic shifts to meet employee demand to allow for more flexible working arrangements.

This led to a perceived boom in smaller, predominantly coastal town living as workers geared up for remote work and a shift to work-from-home.

However, with the pandemic long behind us, and the economy in the doldrums, businesses and companies have increasingly reversed these policies, with ‘back to office’ orders becoming more common.

In reality, work-from-home is only practical for specific fields and careers—and even then, companies are starting to think of it as a failed experiment.

While more flexible work packages and restructured work-life balances are now actively negotiated, fully remote jobs only make up a small percentage of available positions in many fields.

This can be seen in the small percentage of people who actually end up chasing the small-town life.

According to Wise Move’s data, 71% of the moves in 2024 were to the City of Cape Town, with movers showing a clear preference for metropolitan life.

“While bigger ‘city towns’ like Paarl and George still attracted some of the Joburg traffic, the numbers pale in comparison,” it said.

Only around 9% of the in-migration traffic in the Western Cape went to the entire Garden Route, while 5% headed to the West Coast.

“This suggests that even with the flexibility of remote work, urban centres remain king. This is likely due to better job opportunities, the variety of educational institutions, great healthcare and existing family support networks,” it said.

This is reinforced by movers’ given reasons for making the jump: career opportunities are number one, while career shifts or promotions are among the top.

Wise Move said that while the idea of escaping to a peaceful, small-town life might be appealing, in reality, people gravitate towards the security of city life.

It’s less about the zoom town boom, but rather urban repopulation, it said.