Home office work remains rare exception in Central Europe

Budapest, Hungary – Working from home is still not a common practice in Central Europe, Eurostat data shows.

According to figures recently released by the EU’s statistical office, 5.2% of employed persons aged 15 to 64 in the bloc usually worked from home – a share that has remained more or less constant over the past decade. The share of people who declare “sometimes working from home”, however, increased from 5.8% in 2008 to 8.3% last year.

Women appeared slightly more prone to frequent home office work (5.5%) than men (5%), with the largest gender gaps found in France, Luxembourg and Malta.

This was also the case in all four Central European countries, except in Slovakia, where home-office work was slightly more widespread among men.

In all four Visegrad countries, the share of employed persons used to working from home on a regular basis remained below the EU average, with Poland coming first (4.6%), followed by the Czech Republic (4%), Slovakia (3.6%) and Hungary (2.3%).

With 14% of employed people used to home-office work, the Netherlands came first in Europe, followed by Finland (13.3%), Luxembourg (11%), Austria (10%) and Denmark (7.8%).

The Eurostat study also showed that the share of people working from home increases with age, with the highest average rate reported among the 50-64 year-olds (6.4%).

Quite naturally, the share of self-employed people declaring usually working from home (18.5% on average in the EU) was higher than for employees (3%). Freelancers in Finland (46.4%), the Netherlands (44.5%) and Austria (43.6%) were the most likely to do home office work.

In Central Europe, the share of self-employed individuals frequently working from the comfort of their house or apartment reaches its highest level in the Czech Republic (18.4%), followed by Poland (16.6%), Hungary (11.8%) and Slovakia (11.2%).

Previous studies had found that Poland and the Czech Republic had, respectively, the third and fifth-highest rates of self-employed people among EU countries.