The trend of working remotely has been slowly increasing globally since 2015, with a *** to ***** percent annual increase rate. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 upended the world economy and global markets. Employment trends were no exception to this, with the share of employees working remotely increasing to some ** percent in 2022 from just ** percent two years prior. The industry with the highest share of remote workers globally in 2023 was by far the technology sector, with over ** percent of tech employees worldwide working fully or mostly remotely. How are employers dealing with remote work? Many employers around the world have already adopted some remote work policies. According to IT industry leaders, reasons for remote work adoption ranged from a desire to broaden a company’s talent pool, increase productivity, and reduce costs from office equipment or real estate investments. Nonetheless, employers worldwide grappled with various concerns related to hybrid work. Among tech leaders, leading concerns included enabling effective collaboration and preserving organizational culture in hybrid work environments. Consequently, it’s unsurprising that maintaining organizational culture, fostering collaboration, and real estate investments emerged as key drivers for return-to-office mandates globally. However, these efforts were not without challenges. Notably, ** percent of employers faced employee resistance to returning to the office, prompting a review of their remote work policies.

Before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 17 percent of U.S. employees worked from home 5 days or more per week, a share that increased to 44 percent during the pandemic. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the remote working trend, as quarantines and lockdowns made commuting and working in an office close to impossible for millions around the world. Remote work, also called telework or working from home (WFH), provided a solution, with employees performing their roles away from the office supported by specialized technology, eliminating the commute to an office to remain connected with colleagues and clients. What enables working from home?

To enable remote work, employees rely on a remote work arrangements that enable hybrid work and make it safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology supporting remote work including laptops saw a surge in demand, video conferencing companies such as Zoom jumped in value, and employers had to consider new communication techniques and resources. Is remote work the future of work?

The response to COVID-19 has demonstrated that hybrid work models are not necessarily an impediment to productivity. For this reason, there is a general consensus that different remote work models will persist post-COVID-19. Many employers see benefits to flexible working arrangements, including positive results on employee wellness surveys, and potentially reducing office space. Many employees also plan on working from home more often, with 25 percent of respondents to a recent survey expecting remote work as a benefit of employment. As a result, it is of utmost importance to acknowledge any issues that may arise in this context to empower a hybrid workforce and ensure a smooth transition to more flexible work models.

Introduction

Work From Home Statistics: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, a major shift in work culture has taken place globally. Remote work, often referred to as work from home, has become a permanent option for many employees. According to data from Owl Labs and Global Workplace Analytics, about 30 percent of employees in the United States now work remotely full-time as of 2024. Meanwhile, 65 percent of employees prefer remote work over traditional office roles. In Europe, approximately 22 percent of workers were working from home regularly by the end of 2023. Remote work opportunities have also expanded, with LinkedIn reporting a 20 percent rise in remote job postings compared to pre-pandemic levels.

In terms of cost savings, employees who work from home can save an average of USD 6,000 annually on commuting and daily expenses. Additionally, businesses are seeing benefits, as employers can save around USD 11,000 per year for every remote employee. However, not all regions have fully embraced this trend; for instance, in countries like Japan, less than 10 percent of employees work remotely as companies encourage a return to traditional office environments.

As stated in Work from Home Statistics 2025, employees are resigning from their positions to get a remote job if they are called back to the office. Remote work is peace of mind, with which work-life balance is handled.

In 2021, ** percent of respondents currently working at least partially outside the office indicated that their company has a 100 percent remote policy. This is a slight increase from the previous year. Only ** percent of respondents stated that remote work in their company is allowed but not the norm, down from ** percent in 2020. Global shift to new work in 2020 In 2020, the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift from work in the office to work from home, to keep the workforce and the community safe. While this created some struggles in the beginning, many organizations and employees have since adapted and are thriving. Many employees appreciate the benefits of working remotely. Accordingly, one in two individuals indicate that the ability to work remotely is an important decision factor for future employment. Companies experiment with hybrid work models As a result, many companies worldwide are updating their policies to accommodate this new way of working. These include a combination of both flexibility on work location and productive in-person and digital collaboration opportunities. For this reason, organizations are not only actively monitoring both employee well-being and productivity but are also evolving operations to support a hybrid workforce.

Percentage of workforce teleworking or working remotely prior to February 1, 2020, on March 31, 2020, and percentage of workforce able to carry out a majority of their duties during the COVID-19 pandemic, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, business employment size, type of business and majority ownership.

Experimental estimates from the Annual Population Survey for homeworking in the UK, including breakdowns by sex, full-time or part-time, ethnicity, occupation, industry, qualifications, hours worked, pay and sickness absence among others. Includes regression outputs on the different outcomes for homeworkers.

A survey of 1,500 NSW workers during August and September 2020 (2020 Remote Working Survey) and March and April 2021 (2021 Remote Working Survey), commissioned to understand workers' experiences of and attitudes to remote and hybrid working. To be eligible, respondents had to be employed NSW residents with experience of remote working in their current job. After accounting for unemployed people and those whose jobs cannot be done remotely—for example, dentists, cashiers and cleaners—the sample represents around 59 per cent of NSW workers. Workers answered questions on: • their attitudes to remote working • the amount of time they spent working remotely • their employers’ policies, practices, and attitudes • how they spent their time when working remotely • how barriers to remote working have changed • the barriers they faced to hybrid working • their expectations for future remote working

As of 2023, 8.9 percent of employed people in the European Union usually worked from home. This share of home-office workers varied widely between European countries, with a 21 percent of finish workers usually working from home, compared to only one percent of Romanian workers. It was in general more common for women to work from home usually than men, however, this was notably reversed in some countries, such as Ireland where almost 23 percent of men regularly worked from home.

These figures are experimental estimates of online job adverts provided by Adzuna, an online job search engine. The number of job adverts over time is an indicator of the demand for labour. To identify these adverts we have applied text-matching to find job adverts which contain key phrases associated with homeworking such as “remote working”, “work from home”, “home-based” and “telework”. The data do not separately identify job adverts which exclusively offer homeworking from those which offer flexible homeworking, such as one day a week from home.

Data on working patterns and location of work of adults in Great Britain, including costs and benefits of homeworking and future expectations. Survey data from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

The percentage of employed persons in Europe that sometimes work from home increased significantly between 2020 and 2021, reaching **** percent in France, *** percent in Germany, *** percent in Spain, and *** percent in Italy. This increase, driven by the public health restrictions imposed by governments during the Coronavirus pandemic, has proved to be durable in the preceding years, with rates declining slightly in all countries, but remaining at much higher levels than in the pre-pandemic era. France now has around ** percent of employees with the ability to work from home, while Germany has close to ** percent, with significantly lower rates in Spain and Italy.

In 2023, the largest share of employees who preferred to work-from-home in the United States were those between 26 and 41 years old and totaled ** percent of those surveyed within this age group. The age group with the least desire to work from home were between 18 and 25 years old.

Percentage and average percentage of workforce anticipated to work on-site or remotely over the next three months, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), business employment size, type of business, business activity and majority ownership, second quarter of 2024.

The percentage of the working population that does not commute to work. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Years Available: 2018-2022, 2019-2023

Percentage of workforce anticipated to continue to primarily telework once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), business employment size, type of business, business activity and majority ownership, third quarter of 2021.

Even before the Pandemic, some places had been actively trying to attract remote workers. For example, Montana was trying to attract remote workers rather than attract businesses/employers even as early as 2015 (NPR, Flathead Beacon). With remote work now here to stay, it can be helpful to see how this varies by geography. This map shows where remote workers (i.e. workers who work from home) live for states, counties, and tracts. Counts are depicted by size of symbol and percent is depicted by color of symbol. Map opens in Phoenix, AZ and has full nation-wide coverage.This map uses these hosted feature layers containing the most recent American Community Survey data. These layers are part of the ArcGIS Living Atlas, and are updated every year when the American Community Survey releases new estimates, so values in the map always reflect the newest data available.

In 2020, approximately *** million people worked mainly from home in the United Kingdom, an increase of around **** million people when compared with 1998, when just *** million workers mainly worked from home. As a share of all workers in the United Kingdom, this was the equivalent of **** percent of the UK workforce, compared with **** percent in 1998. Rise of the hybrid workforce More recent figures on working location trends in Great Britain, indicate that as of June 2025, around ** percent of workers had worked from home exclusively in the last seven days, with a further ** percent only travelling to work. Just over a ******* of British workers, however, had both worked from home and traveled to work in the last seven days. Although less common than only travelling to work, hybrid working has generally been more popular than only working at home since around Spring 2022 and is possibly one of the most enduring impacts that COVID-19 had on the labor market. Demographics of homeworkers While advancements in internet connectivity and communication software have enabled more people to work from home than ever before, there are still obvious disparities in the share of homeworkers by industry. Over **** of the UK’s agriculture workforce in 2020 regularly worked from home, compared with just *** percent of those that worked in accommodation or food service. In the same year, the region with the highest share of people working from home was South West England at **** percent, while Northern Ireland had the lowest at just *** percent.

In June 2025, approximately 12 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 26 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 43 percent only travelled to work. During this time period, the share of people only travelling to work was highest in March 2022, at 60 percent of respondents, with the peak for only working from home occurring in June 2020. In general, hybrid working has become steadily more popular than fully remote working, with the highest share of people hybrid working in November 2023, when 31 percent of people advising they were hybrid working. What type of workers are most likely to work from home? In 2020, over half of people working in the agriculture sector mainly worked from home, which was the highest share among UK industry sectors at that time. While this industry was one of the most accessible for mainly working at home, just six percent of workers in the accommodation and food services sector mainly did this, the lowest of any sector. In the same year, men were slightly more likely to mainly work from home than women, while the most common age group for mainly working from home was those aged 75 and over, at 45.4 percent. Over a long-term period, the share of people primarily home working has grown from 11.1 percent in 1998, to approximately 17.4 percent in 2020. Growth of Flexible working in the UK According to a survey conducted in 2023, working from home either on a regular, or ad hoc basis was the most common type of flexible working arrangement offered by organizations in the UK, at 62 percent of respondents. Other popular flexible working arrangements include the ability to work flexible hours, work part-time, or take career breaks. Since 2013, for example, the number of employees in the UK that can work flextime has increased from 3.2 million, to around 4.2 million by 2024. When asked why flexible work was important to them, most UK workers said that it supported a better work-life balance, with 41 percent expressing that it made their commute to work more manageable.

In 2022, around ** percent of respondents stated that their biggest struggle when working remotely was staying at home too often because there they don't have reason to leave. Moreover many people who work from home do not necessarily have a designated workspace, they experience a conflation between their living area and workplace. Most notably, around ** percent of respondents reported loneliness as their biggest struggle with working remotely. As a result, remotely working employees emphasize the importance of finding strategies to balance their private lives with their professional routines. On the other hand, employees also state having less difficulties with collaboration and communication in 2021. This is likely due to the quick cultivation of skills during the 2020 pandemic that allow them to effectively communicate and collaborate with others when working from different locations. Challenges inherent in new work set-ups As employees work from different locations, companies are confronted with the urgency to ease some of the challenges inherent in novel hybrid work solutions. Strategies developed to support remote work include training for employees or expanding information technology infrastructure to ensure that employees can collaborate efficiently from different locations. The future of work Certainly, it is important to take the challenges experienced by employees seriously as the current telework trend is likely to continue and become a common way of working in the future. Addressing challenges head-on in the present will ensure better working conditions in the future.

Mexico Employment: AC: Work from Home (WH) data was reported at 5,413,205.000 Person in Jul 2020. This records a decrease from the previous number of 6,678,935.000 Person for Jun 2020. Mexico Employment: AC: Work from Home (WH) data is updated monthly, averaging 6,488,378.500 Person from Apr 2020 (Median) to Jul 2020, with 4 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 7,711,540.000 Person in Apr 2020 and a record low of 5,413,205.000 Person in Jul 2020. Mexico Employment: AC: Work from Home (WH) data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Mexico – Table MX.G045: Employment: ECOVID-ML 2020: Age 18 and Above: Affected by COVID-19. [COVID-19-IMPACT]