Is homeworking still a thing?

Some may be asking, how can home workers be increasing right as the numbers of people going back into the office are increasing too? As ever, different data is measuring different things. As the pandemic wore on, more people started to acknowledge that home was their main place of work. Their perception of whether they were homeworkers and their roles were reclassified. It’s possible that a majority of these people are actually hybrid workers, perhaps doing two days in the office and three days at home (Conversely, many people may be three days in the office, two days at home and therefore not show up in this chart).

Another advantage of this dataset is that it is large and has plenty of variables to explore. We can split, for example, into broad occupational groups. The chart below clearly shows that the more office-based jobs (managerial, professional, and administrative) have made the switch to home working in much greater numbers. Interestingly some occupational groups, such as elementary occupations, and process plant and machine operatives, didn’t budge. Some jobs can’t be done from home. Indeed, it is always worth bearing in mind that the majority of people still work away from home.

What might happen next?

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the trend in these charts is that it does not yet look as if it has peaked. Over two years since the start of the pandemic, and it seems the dust has yet to settle. It’s possible that increasing travel costs, be they increased train fares or petrol prices, and reduced services as part of cost-cutting measures, could result in a positive feedback loop, further accelerating the trend for home working. Increased house prices may push prospective buyers further away from jobs, and this will increase commuting times and further entrench the home working trend.

Parts of Government are not keen on homeworking but have little power over the private sector to fight the trend, instead of focusing on civil servants. The debate has moved on from whether home working is good or bad and is now about what level of hybrid works best. This is sensible. In the pre-pandemic world, 30% of the workforce occasionally worked from one, and 25% worked part-time. Providing time for face-to-face collaboration and facilitating hybrid working was already a good idea.

The fact that home working was on the rise pre-pandemic, and has stayed elevated even after the risk of harm from Covid has receded, suggests that there was a latent demand for it and that the pandemic was the catalyst. Perhaps the biggest lesson for policymakers and businesses is to experiment with new ways of working because some of them might stick.