Jean-Victor Alipour

In February, 24.1% of employees in Germany worked from home at least part of the time. This is the finding of an ifo Institute survey of just under 9,000 companies. “The proportion has remained almost constant for two years,” says ifo expert Jean-Victor Alipour. “Regardless of the debates at individual companies about returning to the office, working from home has become firmly established in Germany.”

Most companies in Germany, 84%, want to keep their current rules on working from home, finds an ifo Institute survey. “This applies to all sectors of the economy and to small, medium-sized, and large companies alike,” says ifo researcher Simon Krause. Only 8% of companies would like to change their rules on working from home. “Despite the public debate about returning to the office, working from home has become firmly established in the working world,” Krause adds.

Germans work 17% of their working hours from home, finds an ifo Institute survey. “However, barely half of all jobs are even compatible with remote working in the first place,” says ifo expert Jean-Victor Alipour. “Where it’s an option, employees work from home an average of 1.5 days a week.”

In Germany, working from home declined somewhat in the spring, from 24.7 percent of employees in February to 24.0 percent in April. This is the finding of a recent ifo Institute survey. “The decline has been minimal, despite discussions about returning to the office. Overall, the proportion of people working from home remains at a significantly higher level than before the pandemic,” says ifo expert Jean-Victor Alipour. In 2019, before Covid, only 10 percent of German employees worked from home at least some of the time.

Germany’s IT service providers are particularly likely to have staff working from home, according to ifo Institute surveys. In February, the proportion of people in that sector who work from home at least some of the time rose to 73.4 percent, up from 71.7 percent in November. Remote working is also widespread among management consultancies (70.7 percent) and in advertising and market research (55.2 percent). “Looking at the German economy overall, the proportion of employees working remotely is stabilizing at around 25 percent. We’ve seen no change since the requirement for companies to offer remote working was lifted at the end of March last year,” says Jean-Victor Alipour, an ifo Institute expert on remote working. 

The proportion of employees working from home in Germany fell only slightly over the summer. It stood at 24.5 percent in August, down from 24.9 percent in April, according to the ifo Institute survey.

The proportion of German employees who worked from home at least part of the time fell to 24.9 percent in April. The figure was 27.6 percent in March. This is the finding of an ifo Institute survey. 

As the latest wave of the coronavirus reached its peak, the number of people in Germany working from home remained largely the same. In February, 28.2 percent of employees worked from home at least some of the time; in January that figure was 28.4 percent. This is the finding of an ifo Institute survey.

Rising coronavirus numbers have led more workers back to their home office. In January, 28.4 percent of employees worked at least some of the time from home, up from 27.9 percent in December, according to an ifo Institute survey.

Rising coronavirus numbers have led more workers back to their home office in Germany. In December, 27.9 of employees worked at least partially from home, up from 23.8 percent in August. The high-water mark of 31.7 percent occurred in March. This is the finding of an ifo Institute survey. The recent increase was across all industries. Among service providers, the proportion rose from 33.4 to 38.2 percent; in wholesale, from 15.8 to 20.8 percent; in manufacturing, from 16.4 to 19.7 percent; in retail, from 5.3 to 6.6 percent; and in construction, from 5.0 to 8.5 percent. 

In Germany, the share of online job postings with a work-from-home option increased to 12 percent between 2019 and 2021. This means the figure has more than tripled compared to its 2019 level, according to an evaluation of 35 million job ads conducted by the ifo Institute and the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU).

Fewer German employees worked from home in July than in the previous month, according to an ifo Institute survey. This found that the proportion of employees who worked from home at least part of the time fell from 28.4 percent to 25.5 percent. “People are increasingly looking for the personal contact that working in the office offers,” says Jean-Victor Alipour, an ifo Institute expert on working from home.

Working from home is primarily an option in metropolitan areas. In cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, or Stuttgart, more than 57 percent of all employees could work mainly or entirely from home, finds an analysis conducted by the infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences and the ifo Institute. This is the first time that the authors, led by ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour and Robert Follmer (infas), have been able to present findings on the geographical distribution of the potential for working from home and its prevalence.

Slightly fewer German employees worked from home in June than in May, even though the obligation to do so expired only at the end of June. This is according to an ifo Institute survey, which found that the number of employees who worked from home at least part of the time fell from 31.0 percent to 28.4 percent in June. “Despite the fact that the obligation to work from home was still in force until the end of June, we’re already seeing a slight decline,” says Jean-Victor Alipour, an ifo Institute expert on working from home. “As infection rates subside and vaccination rates increase, employees are returning to work on-site.”

Slightly more German employees worked from home in May than in the previous month, according to an ifo Institute survey. It found that the number of employees who worked from home at least part of the time rose from 30.8 to 31.0 percent.

Slightly fewer German employees worked from home in April than in the previous month, according to an ifo Institute survey. It found that the number of employees who worked from home at least part of the time fell to 30.8 percent in April, from 31.7 percent in March and 30.3 percent in February.

In Germany, many more people could be working from home. This is the result of a recent study conducted by the ifo Institute, according to which only around 30 percent of employees worked at least some hours from home in February. “An immense 56 percent of potential for remote working remains untapped by companies and employees. The remote-working obligation for employers, which was adopted in January to limit the number of Covid-19 infections, has so far failed to take full effect,” says ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour, one of the study’s authors. The proportion of companies using remote working was 81 percent in February.

Just over half (54 percent) of companies in Germany want to put working from home on a more permanent footing. This is according to a study by the ifo Institute, published in the latest edition of ifo Schnelldienst. Input for the study includes evaluations of data from current ifo company surveys and a survey by professional networking service LinkedIn of its members. “The coronavirus crisis could give working from home arrangements a lasting boost,” says Oliver Falck, Director of the ifo Center for Industrial Organization and New Technologies and coauthor of the study.

Dass das Arbeiten von zu Hause nach Corona ausgedient hat, ist ein Irrtum, meint Jean-Victor Alipour. Der Kulturwandel sei nicht aufzuhalten. Die Frage laute nicht, ob, sondern wie Homeoffice integriert werden kann.

In der Corona-Krise zeigt sich: Als Arbeitsort hat das Büro ausgedient. Aufgeben sollte man es dennoch nicht. Seine Stärke liegt woanders.