No, you're right. While "1.9x more" is common enough to have an agreed upon meaning, "1.9x less" is not a common expression. It's just a low quality article, don't think too much about it.
Maybe they're trying to say that the full-remote salaries are "1.9x more" than the full-office salaries and they don't understand that it doesn't work that way. That would mean that if full-office salaries were $50,000 then full-remote be $95,000 more, for a total of $145,000.
I think they are trying to say that in-person positions pay 1/1.9 times as much as remote ones. On top of the issues around the phrase "x times less" being a bit confusing, this suffers, I think, from false precision. I mean, come on, how accurate is this survey? How about "In person positions pay roughly half that of full-remote ones."
