Only 13% of workers practice it and it is more common among employees aged 25-44 and the self-employed
Teleworking is here to stay. This was one of the predictions repeated by many experts during the pandemic, when several million people were forced to work from home at night. And it wasn’t just experts who predicted it, the general population thought so too: Last year nearly 30% believed telecommuting would increase, a percentage that grew to 34% among men, a recent CIS survey shows. However, these predictions have not come true. In the first months of the year, remote working has far from increased.
In the first quarter of 2022, nearly 105,000 fewer people will telecommute than at the end of last year. They represent a total of 2.63 million, only 13.1% of the employed, after this percentage has fallen again by five tenths. This level is a long way from what was recorded at the worst moment of the pandemic, when it reached 20% in the second quarter of 2020, according to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA).
So, in complete confinement, telecommuting became the lifeline for many companies with more than three million people working remotely for more than half of the days. A historical figure to which we have to add well over half a million that he occasionally did.
But the number of frequent teleworkers has fallen to just 1.5 million now. On the contrary, those who practice it occasionally – although they have fallen slightly at the beginning of the year – have skyrocketed compared to before the health crisis: if only 3.5% could do it in 2019, it is now 5.6%, more than 1.1 million.
It should be noted, however, that there are strong differences between groups. Self-employed people, for example, telecommute more to a threefold increase in the percentage of wage earners, who work less than half of the days of the week as well as more. And it’s that while telecommuting among employees has fallen from 17% to almost 10% after the pandemic, among the self-employed has remained stable and even improved slightly to 30.6%. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurs who regularly use this formula have decreased compared to 2020 from 20.9% to 16.5%.
The fact that people work remotely more or less days a week also depends on age and the autonomous community. The population aged between 25 and 44 is the most frequent telecommuter, while occasional telework is concentrated in groups over the age of 35, especially those between 45 and 54.
Women between the ages of 16 and 24 tend to telecommute at a lower percentage than the rest. Only 3.4% of working women in this group are permanent teleworkers, compared to 5.5% of men this age. In terms of occasional jobs, there is a higher proportion of women between the ages of 16 and 44, while from the age of 45, men are more likely to work remotely, fewer days a week.
In terms of communities, Madrid still has the highest percentage of people who telecommute regularly, 13.5% of the working population; a level twice that of most regions. It is followed by Asturias (9%), which, with an increase of 1.2 points, becomes the region that grew the most in the last quarter, and Catalonia (8.8%). Judging the data by community in terms of gender, it is noted that there are only ten areas of autonomy where the majority of people who telecommute regularly are women; Cantabria and La Rioja top this list.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
