Nearly 7% work from home in Cyprus

The percentage of employees that work from home in the European Union has increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, including in Cyprus.

During the COVID-19 crisis, many employed people were faced with changing work patterns – including working from home.

In 2019, 5.5% of employed people aged 20 – 64 in the EU usually worked from home.

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis was apparent as this share more than doubled in 2020 to 12.3% (6.8 percentage points).

According to Eurostat, there was a further increase in the share of people usually working from home in 2021, reaching 13.5% (1.2 pp).

In Cyprus, the percentage of people working from home increased from 1.3% in 2019 to 4.5% in 2020 and 6.7% in 2021 – still below the EU average.

The regional distribution of working from home was somewhat skewed insofar as there were 95 NUTS level 2 regions where this share was above the EU average, compared with 140 regions that recorded lower-than-average shares.

In Stockholm, the capital region of Sweden, 40.5% of employed people were usually working from home in 2021.

This was the highest share across NUTS level 2 regions, with two more capital regions recording the next highest shares: Eastern and Midland in Ireland (39.3% of employed people) and Helsinki-Uusimaa in Finland (37.0%).

These three were the only regions where the percentage was above 30%.

The share of EU employees who usually work from home rose by 8.0 percentage points between 2019 and 2021.

There was a rapid increase in the proportion of employed people working from home in several capital and urban regions.

The increases in Eastern and Midland in Ireland and Stockholm were +33.1 pp and +32.8 pp, respectively.

When comparing the pre-pandemic situation in 2019 to 2021, employed people working from home increased in these two capital regions by more than four times the EU average.