People are increasingly working from home in many European countries, and the coronavirus crisis has only accelerated this trend, according to data from Eurostat.
“Close to every eighth European worked from home in 2020. In Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg almost every fourth citizen. In Poland, 8.9 percent of employees worked remotely,” the head of the Polish Development Fund Paweł Borys informed, citing new Eurostat data which informed how the professional field adapted to counteracting the spread of the coronavirus.
According to the latest data, the country with the highest index of employees working remotely in 2020 was Finland (25.1 percent). Second was Luxembourg (23.1 percent) followed by Ireland (21.5 percent).
In this tally, Poland ended up below the EU average (12.3 percent), with 8.9 percent of Poles working from home. Below Poland were countries such as Czechia (7.2 percent), Slovakia (5.7 percent) and Hungary (3.6 percent). The country with the lowest number of citizens who could carry out their work from home was Bulgaria — only 1.2 percent.
Eurostat data also shows that in 2020, more women than men worked remotely (13.2 percent compared to 11.5 percent). The highest index of employees who operated through hybrid work was recorded in the age group between 25 and 49 years.
Paweł Borys also noted that hybrid work will most likely be permanently introduced in many professions, which is bad news for office building owners.
A CBRE Group report from April states that in Warsaw itself, office space has exceeded 6.04 million square meters, an 8 percent increase within a year. In the first months of 2021, however, only 109,000 square meters of such space was rented, a 21 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2020.
