Teleworking seemed to have come to stay, but we are already seeing how many companies (also giants in the tech sector) are betting on a return to the offices. In Spain too. A few days ago, a Funcas report showed how in Spain the teleworking trend is very low compared to other European countries and we are going to analyze, With figures, how has this trend changed, facing the end of this 2022.
It stands out that, of the whole of Europe, it is Ireland where the habit of teleworking has been most established, or at least half of the days worked: a third of employed persons aged 20 to 64 (33%) did so in 2021, about three times more than in Spain (9.6%). When the category is extended to those who work from home “sometimes” -less than half the days worked-, the percentage in Spain rises to 15.5%.
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A 2021 that did not bet on teleworking
This is because, despite the considerable increase that remote work experienced in Spain in 2020, in 2021 it barely grew, according to data from Funcas, staying far from the European Union average. This despite the fact that it is a modality that workers prefer. In fall 2020, nearly two-thirds (63%) of people who started working from home said they would want to continue doing so after the pandemic.
It must be taken into account that many extensive studies are carried out one year ahead and what we can see now is that in 2021 there was no such commitment to teleworking in Spain as there was in other countries of the European Union. Despite the fact that in our country they seek to promote the arrival of people who telework to live here and that in the technological sector it seems to have penetrated more, companies are bent on putting us back in the office.
The latest Survey on Equipment and Use of Information and Communication Technologys in Homes (National Institute of Statistics, 2021) also shows a high assessment of the experience of teleworking in Spain (8.1 out of 10) among people who work and that at some point they have done it remotely.
Comparison with the pre-Covid situation
In 2019 we had that, according to the Active Population Survey, continued a moderate upward trend of people working from home, which had been slowly seen in the previous years. Both those who do it normally (or more than half the days) that went from 4.3% to 4.8% in 2019, as well as those who do it occasionally, increased from 3.2% to 3, 5%.
Asturias and the Balearic Islands were the places with the highest proportion of remote workers. Already at that time there was a huge difference in this trend in Spain compared to other EU countries: in the Netherlands there were 14.0% of people who teleworked and in Finland 13.3%, who led the ranking before the pandemic .
A report from a few months ago published in EPdata showed figures for 2019, 2020 and 2021. At first glance, the enormous upturn in 2020 and the slight drop in 2021 in many of the Communities could already be seen in many Spanish Autonomous Communities:
A survey from October this year analyzing the use of technology in companies found that of companies with less than 10 employees installed in Spain, 16.5 allowed teleworking. And he spoke of a reduction of 4.5 points only in this type of company compared to the same study a year earlier. In the latter, the Community of Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country are the communities with the highest percentage of teleworkers.
