In June 2025, approximately 13 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 26 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 44 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 6 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.
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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.
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.
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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).
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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.
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Analysis of how working from home has affected individuals’ spending and how this differs by characteristics, Great Britain.
There were 788 thousand workers aged between 50 and 54 that worked mainly from home in the United Kingdom in 2020, which was the highest of any age group. When adjusted for the overall working population, the age group with the highest working from home rate were those aged 70 and over, with over 45 percent of this group mainly working from home.
In 2020, *** thousand people working in the professional, scientific, and technical industries in the United Kingdom worked mainly from home, the highest number of any sector. The industry sector with the highest percentage of homeworkers was agriculture, forestry, and fishing, with over half of that industry's workforce working from home.
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Breakdowns of the prevalence of homeworking by industry, occupation, region, age, sex and ethnicity.
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How workers spent their working day in 2015, and April and September 2020 based on data from the Time Use Survey. Includes start time and length and number of breaks. Disaggregated by those who work from home and those who work away from home.
In 2020, **** percent of workers in South East England mainly worked from home, compared with the United Kingdom average of **** percent. The area with the lowest percentage of people working from home in the UK was Northern Ireland, at **** percent.
Official statistics are produced impartially and free from political influence.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by method used to travel to work (2001 specification) and by distance travelled to work. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
_As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Due to methodological changes the ‘mainly work at or from home: any workplace type’ category has a population of zero. Please use the transport_to_workplace_12a classification instead. Read more about this quality notice._
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about this quality notice.
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
Method used to travel to workplace
A person's place of work and their method of travel to work. This is the 2001 method of producing travel to work variables.
"Work mainly from home" applies to someone who indicated their place of work as their home address and travelled to work by driving a car or van, for example visiting clients.
Distance travelled to work
The distance, in kilometres, between a person's residential postcode and their workplace postcode measured in a straight line. A distance travelled of 0.1km indicates that the workplace postcode is the same as the residential postcode. Distances over 1200km are treated as invalid, and an imputed or estimated value is added.
“Work mainly at or from home” is made up of those that ticked either the "Mainly work at or from home" box for the address of workplace question, or the “Work mainly at or from home” box for the method of travel to work question.
Distance is calculated as the straight line distance between the enumeration postcode and the workplace postcode.
Combine this variable with “Economic activity status” to identify those in employment at the time of the census.
In 2021, approximately 37 percent of workers in Great Britain wished to work from home some of the time after the Coronavirus pandemic is over, with one in five wanted to work from home all the time. Despite this, 37 percent of British workers advised they never want to work from home, with seven percent not sure.
For these statistics home workers are defined as those who usually spend at least half of their work time using their home, either within their grounds or in different places or using it as a base.
These documents are part of the larger compendium publication the Statistical Digest of Rural England, a collection of rural statistics on a wide range of social and economic government policy areas. The statistics allow comparisons between the different rural and urban area classifications.
Indicators:
Percentage of all those employed age 16 and over, by rural-urban classification
Time series from 2006 for numbers of people home working or working somewhere separate to home, of all those employed and age 16 or over, by rural-urban classification
Data source: Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Business Inquiry (ABI)
Coverage: England
Rural classification used: Office for National Statistics Rural Urban Classification
Next release date: tbc
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
License information was derived automatically
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in England and Wales in employment the week before the census by method used to travel to work (2001 specification) and by industry. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
_As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Due to methodological changes the ‘mainly work at or from home: any workplace type’ category has a population of zero. Please use the transport_to_workplace_12a classification instead. Read more about this quality notice._
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
Method used to travel to workplace
A person's place of work and their method of travel to work. This is the 2001 method of producing travel to work variables.
"Work mainly from home" applies to someone who indicated their place of work as their home address and travelled to work by driving a car or van, for example visiting clients.
Industry (current)
Classifies people aged 16 years and over who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021 by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code that represents their current industry or business.
The SIC code is assigned based on the information provided about a firm or organisation’s main activity.
The Civil Service published weekly data on HQ Office Occupancy from Whitehall departments’ as a proxy measure of ‘return to offices’ following the pandemic. This was suspended in line with pre-election guidance for the duration of the Election Period. Going forward this data will now be published quarterly, resuming October 2024.
Press enquiries: pressoffice@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
The data was originally gathered for internal purposes to indicate the progress being made by departments in returning to the workplace in greater numbers. Data was collected in respect of Departmental HQ buildings to gain a general understanding of each department’s position without requiring departments to introduce data collection methods across their whole estate which would be expensive and resource intensive.
These figures are representative of employees whose home location is their departmental HQ building. These figures do not include contractors and visitors. Departments providing data are listed below.
All data presented is sourced and collected by departments and provided to the Cabinet Office. The data presented are not Official Statistics.
There are four main methods used to collect the Daily Average Number of Employees in the HQ building:
It is for departments to determine the most appropriate method of collection. This data does not capture employees working in other locations such as other government buildings, other workplaces or working from home.
The data provided is for Departmental HQ buildings only and inferences about the wider workforce cannot be made.
The data should not be used to make comparisons between departments. The factors determining the numbers of employees working in the workplace will differ across departments, this is due to, the variation in operating models and the broad range of public services they deliver. The different data collection methods used by departments will also make comparisons between departments invalid.
Percentage of employees working in the HQ building compared to building capacity is calculated by: Monthly total number of employees in the HQ building divided by the monthly capacity of the HQ building.
In the majority of cases the HQ building is defined as where the Secretary of State for that department is based.
Current Daily Capacity is the total number of people that can be accommodated in the building.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
License information was derived automatically
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in England and Wales in employment the week before the census by method used to travel to work (2001 specification) and by occupation. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
_As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Due to methodological changes the ‘mainly work at or from home: any workplace type’ category has a population of zero. Please use the transport_to_workplace_12a classification instead. Read more about this quality notice._
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about this quality notice.
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
Method used to travel to workplace
A person's place of work and their method of travel to work. This is the 2001 method of producing travel to work variables.
"Work mainly from home" applies to someone who indicated their place of work as their home address and travelled to work by driving a car or van, for example visiting clients.
Occupation (current)
Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.
It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation.
The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels.
The increase in the extent of working-from-home determined by the COVID-19 health crisis has led to a substantial shift of economic activity across geographical areas; which we refer to as a Zoomshock. When a person works from home rather than at the office, their work-related consumption of goods and services provided by the locally consumed service industries will take place where they live, not where they work. Much of the clientèle of restaurants, coffee bars, pubs, hair stylists, health clubs, taxi providers and the like located near workplaces is transferred to establishment located near where people live. These data are our calculations of the Zoomshock at the MSOA level. They reflect estimats of the change in the number of people working in UK neighbourhoods due to home-working.
In 2020, **** percent of male workers in the United Kingdom mainly worked from home, compared to **** percent of female workers. This type of working arrangement has become increasingly popular recently, with **** percent of UK workers mainly working from home in 2020, compared with **** percent in 2019.
In June 2025, approximately 13 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 26 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 44 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 6 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.