The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago prompted a dramatic shift toward remote work as companies adjusted to lockdowns and social distancing mandates. What was initially seen as a temporary measure soon exposed several advantages, including greater flexibility, reduced commuting time, and improved work-life balance for many employees. As restrictions began to lift, remote work continued to persist, gradually evolving into hybrid arrangements where employees split their time between home and the office. Today, remote and hybrid setups have become commonplace across numerous industries, significantly reshaping workplace culture and employee expectations around flexibility.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in April 2025, more than one in five workers—nearly 35 million Americans—worked remotely at least part of the time. However, the extent of remote work varies widely across different jobs and sectors. While remote work is nearly impossible in many service or production roles, with telework rates in the low single digits, most white-collar professions are far less dependent on physical office presence. In these fields, the rate of remote work is significantly higher than the overall national average of about 20 percent.
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For instance, BLS reports that over 60 percent of the 6.5 million workers in computer and mathematical occupations worked remotely—at least part-time—in April 2025, with more than a third working entirely from home. Similarly high rates were observed among professionals in business and finance, legal roles, and management positions.
In summary, there remains a significant disparity in workplace flexibility across occupational categories. In April 2025, 36 percent of workers in management, professional, and related occupations, and 23 percent of those in sales and office roles, engaged in some form of telework. In contrast, remote work remained rare in service occupations (5.5 percent), construction and maintenance (3.5 percent), and production and transportation roles (2.8 percent).
Five years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic marked a dramatic shift in workplace dynamics, as working from home suddenly became the norm for millions of workers in the United States and across the globe. This transformation offered employees newfound flexibility, enabling them to manage their time more effectively, eliminate commutes, facilitate childcare, and often achieve a better work-life balance. Remote work also allowed for a customized work environment, fostering comfort and productivity for many.
However, traditional office settings continue to hold unique advantages, which is why more and more employers have started to call their workers back to offices for most days of the week. Offices facilitate in-person collaboration, spontaneous brainstorming, and social interaction, all of which are challenging to replicate virtually. Additionally, the structured environment of an office can provide clearer boundaries between work and personal life, reducing distractions and helping employees switch off when at home.
In many cases, hybrid models combining the benefits of both setups have emerged, catering to diverse employee preferences and living situations and striking a balance between the benefits and disadvantages of both working from home and in the office. According to Statista Consumer Insights, 1 in 5 American employees currently work from home regularly, while 40 percent of respondents regularly work in a company office.
Asians work from home the least in a global comparison, while college-educated workers from English-speaking countries and Africa do so more frequently. These are the results from a new survey by the Ifo Institute and Stanford University. While all Asian respondents only worked an average of approximately 1.1 days a week from home, this was around 1.2 days in Europe, 1.25 days in Latin America, 1.4 days in Africa, and 1.6 days in English-speaking countries. Women tend to work from home more than men, except in Europe, tied to mothers expressing a high desire to work remotely in the survey. The countries that saw the most work from home days were Canada, the United Kingdom, and Finland, while the least were observed in South Korea, China, Greece, and Japan.
In general, people expressed a higher desire to work from home than they actually did, led by mothers who on average said they would like to be present remotely 2.66 days a week, followed by childless men at 2.62 days and fathers at 2.57 days. In 2024, the people in the survey actually worked from home only 1.27 days a week.
A survey by the Ifo Institute and Stanford University has found that childless men have a bigger desire to work from home than fathers. Among 16,422 college-educated workers surveyed in 2024 and 2025 in 40 countries, fathers on average said they would like to work remotely 2.57 days per week, surpassed by childless males slightly at 2.62 days.
While the difference is only small, mothers - for comparison - have a much higher desire than women without children to be working from home, as it presumably aligns with their higher share of care duties better. Mothers on average said that 2.66 days of working remotely would be ideal for their current situation, while for childless women, this number was 2.53. Another factor influencing the bigger gap could be children still staying mainly with the mother in many cases for separated or never-dating couples.
Overall, the survey also showed that people worked from home less than they actually desired. In 2024, the average person in the study only worked from home 1.27 days per week, down from 1.33 days in 2023 and 1.61 days in 2022, still far below perceived ideal times working from home. Above-average work-from-home allowances could be found in English-speaking countries at around 1.6 days a week, led by Canada and the United Kingdom. Respondents from a sample of African countries worked around 1.4 days from home, for example, in South Africa or Nigeria. In Europe, Finns and Germans worked from home a lot, but the continent on average only gets to log in remotely 1.2 days a week, as other Scandinavian countries, as well as Greece and Turkey, actually worked remotely below the survey average. In Latin America, the gap between women and men working from home was the widest, again hinting at unequal care work splits.