Most employees say they accomplish as much work at home as they do in their offices
The number of Canadians who work from home has slowly been declining in 2023, a new report from Statistics Canada found.
According to Statistics Canada’s latest Research to Insights: Working from home in Canada report, the number of Canadian employees who worked from home was 19.7 percent in November 2023. While this was only a slight change from the 19.9 percent in October 2023 and 20.2 percent in September 2023, this showed the steep decline since its 41.1 percent peak in April 2020.
Meanwhile, hybrid work arrangements have slowly been increasing, with November 2023 seeing 11.7 percent of workers in a hybrid set-up.
Many jobs could be performed at home
The report further found that about 39 percent of Canadian jobs in 2019 could be performed at home, with the finance and insurance industry having the highest number at 85.3 percent. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was also found that industries who had a high telework capacity, percentage of jobs that can be done at home, had high rates of work from home set ups.
From April 2020 to June 2021, Ottawa had 47 percent of all workers perform their tasks from home, with many of them working for the federal public administration. Notably, the public administration sector had a 58.2 percent telework capacity in 2019.
June 2022 saw about 5.3 percent of Canadian employees with a remote work arrangement for an employer at a different province, amounting to 179,000 workers. In 2016, this number was only 12,600.
About 90 percent of employees who previously had face-to-face work arrangements prior to working from home reported that they accomplished as much work at home as they had in their offices in February 2021. However, the report noted that the productivity effects of a remote set up were still likely to vary across companies, sectors, and types of work arrangements, whether it is hybrid work or exclusively remote work.
Employees were also found to have varying preference when it comes to remote work as nearly one in every four workers would ideally work most of their hours at home while one in eight preferred lesser hours at home. The report further noted that employee retention may be negatively affected if there is a mismatch between an employee’s preference and their work hours.
Statistic Canada’s Research to Insights report is a series of presentations that features finding on selected research topics.
