Days worked from home stabilizing at around 30%

After spiking dramatically at the start of the pandemic, the percentage of paid days worked from home appears to be stabilizing at around one-third.

The organization WFH Research came to this conclusion after examining its latest monthly online survey, taken since May 2020 with over 100,000 observations to date. Around July of 2020, the proportion of days worked from home averaged around 61.5%; this was followed by a slow and steady reduction over further months until around the start of this year, when numbers generally hovered between 30% and 35%. The latest data from November shows a little less than 30%, a very small variation in the overall pattern in 2022.

This is after, according to the poll, the pandemic squeezed about 40 years of progress into a single 12-month span. Pre-pandemic the average was only 4.7% versus the 61.5% a short time later. It would appear that the amount of time spent working from home has roughly halved since the pandemic.

The poll also found that people desire even more remote work time than they have now. About 30% of poll respondents said that, ideally, they would be able to work from home all five days of the week. This is only slightly less than the current 32% who report having zero days of remote work per week. Those who have hybrid arrangements report that Thursday and Friday are the most favored days to physically be at their jobs.

As of now, 13% of full-time employees are fully remote, 58% are full-time on site, and 29% are in a hybrid arrangement. The three most common industries for remote work are information/tech, followed by finance, followed by “professional and business services.”