Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, January 29, 2024
Summary
Remote workers make up nearly half of online workers in the US, Germany, and the UK. In Japan, remote working rates are lower, and among China’s socioeconomically elite online workers, the rates are higher. Smaller employers generally have the highest percentage of workers working remotely, although the pattern is not significantly different among medium and large employers. Remote working rates in 2023 are slightly lower in 2023 than in 2022, although not substantially so.
This MetaFAQs reports on the number of online adults working remotely in the US, Germany, the UK, Japan, and China, split by the employer’s size.
Remote working trends by country for employers of all sizes
- Following the onset of the Covid pandemic, remote working has become the norm for working adults in most countries surveyed
- In the US and the UK, the percentage of workers working remotely has dropped slowly to approach the halfway mark
- In Germany, remote working peaked in 2021 and has since declined
- In Japan, remote work also peaked in 2021, although it has never reached the levels in other countries surveyed
- The socioeconomically elite adults surveyed strongly increased remote work to a peak in 2022, which has since subsided slightly
Remote working trends by country for small employers (< 100 employees)
- Among small employers with less than 100 employees, remote working is a regular practice for more than half of online workers in the US, Germany, the UK, and China.
- In Japan, the share is higher among these smaller employers than among larger employers, although this share is still less than 50%
- Among these smaller employers, remote work reached its peak in 2021 in the US, Germany, and Japan and has since only slowly declined
Remote working trends by country for medium employers (100-999 employees)
- Among medium-sized employers, remote workers make up half of workers in the US and the UK
- In Japan and Germany, remote workers are less than 50%
Remote working trends by country for large employers (1,000+ employees)
- Large employers – those with 1,000 or more employees – have half of their employees regularly working remotely in the US, Germany, and the UK
- In Japan, this share peaked in 2021 and has since declined, although at no point did the share surpass fifty percent
Tables – Remote work status by employer size and country (DRxWFH)
About MetaFAQs
MetaFAQs are answers to frequently asked questions about technology users. The research results showcase the TUP/Technology User Profile study, MetaFacts’ survey of a representative sample of online adults profiling the full market’s use of technology products and services. The current wave of TUP is TUP/Technology User Profile 2023, which is TUP’s 41st annual.
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Indexing
Lenses: User Profile; Work/Life Balance
Tables: WFHxCOUNTRY
Tags: Business market, China, Commercial, Employees, Employers, Enterprise, Germany, Japan, Pandemic, Remote workers, Remote working, Telework, Teleworkers, Trends, Work from home, Work/life balance, UK, US
Waves: TUP 2020; TUP 2021; TUP 2022; TUP 2023
Item: TUP_doc_2024_0129_remt
Remote-worker-dominance-trends-downwards-slightly-in-many-countries-TUP-2023-TUP_doc_2024_0129_remt-20240325