Working from Home Increases in Germany
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. “The rate of people working from home has risen further, but it’s still a good three percentage points below its March 2021 peak,” says Jean-Victor Alipour, an ifo Institute expert on working from home. “Apparently, not all companies are complying with the remote-working obligation, which was reintroduced at the end of November,” Alipour says. The remote-working potential of 56 percent calculated by the ifo Institute is still far from exhausted.
Among service providers, the proportion rose from 38.2 to 39.2 percent; in manufacturing, from 19.7 to 20.2 percent; and in retail, from 6.6 to 6.9 percent. In construction, the proportion fell from 8.5 to 7.7 percent; in wholesale, it fell from 20.8 to 20.2 percent. In programming and broadcasting and in telecommunications, the rate plummeted: 46.8 percent and 53.6 percent of employees, respectively, did their jobs from home. In the chemical industry, more employees were working from home again: the proportion rose to 21.7 percent, up from 16.6 percent in December. Once again, the highest proportion of working from home was to be found among IT service providers at 78.0 percent, followed by management consultants at 70.3 percent. In contrast, it is very rare for people in the hotel industry to work from home; the rate remained low at 2.7 percent.
The ifo Podcast “Economy for All” has more information about working from home.
Evaluation of regional data: Coronavirus Data Platform (2021), “Working from Home in the Course of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” July 2021 issue, Bonn.
Publication
Is Working from Home Here to Stay? A Look at 35 Million Job Ads
ifo Institut, München, 2021
ifo Schnelldienst, 2021, 74, Nr. 09, 46-52