Working from home is becoming increasingly rare – especially in these sectors

Home office is currently part of everyday working life for almost a quarter of employees in Germany. This is shown by data from the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. But many companies like Amazon, Deutsche Bank and SAP are demanding more presence again. Employees are less enthusiastic about this. The demand for remote jobs is increasing: Figures from the career portal Linkedin show that the intensity of job searches in Germany has increased by over 8 percent this year, and more than one in five applications sent via the platform was for a remote job -position.

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However, the high demand is offset by an insufficient supply. This is shown by a job market analysis that the personnel market research Index Research prepared exclusively for Capital. To do this, she examined how often the term “home office” was included in job advertisements in print media, online exchanges, company websites and the Federal Employment Agency’s job portal between January and August 2024.

The result: With the pandemic, employees were able to get used to working from home. Now, however, the supply is stagnating and even decreasing slightly. “Home office has become an integral part of the working world,” says Index CEO Jürgen Grenz. “However, the term only appeared in around 12 percent of all job advertisements placed between January and August 2024.”

Industry comparison: different offerings

According to the Ifo Institute, working from home is generally feasible in 79 percent of companies. In large companies, this is much more common at 93 percent, where employees spend 20 percent of their working hours in the home office. In small and medium-sized companies, where only 75 percent of employees can work from home, employees only work 15 percent of their time at home.

However, a closer look at the individual sectors reveals major differences. While 58 percent of working hours in the IT industry and 50 percent of working hours in management consulting were spent at home, employees in the construction and catering industries only spend two percent of their working hours in the home office. In industry it is ten percent of working hours.

The industry difference reflects the current job market, as the index evaluation shows. “In percentage terms, home office was most frequently mentioned in job advertisements for specialists in the legal and tax sectors,” says Grenz. In the months January to August 2024, the share was 34 percent – an increase of more than five percent compared to the same period last year. The IT industry and management consultancies advertisedMore than 30 percent of their advertised positions have a home office. The proportion here remained almost constant compared to the previous year.

The home office offer was lowest in the hotel and hospitality industry as well as in medical, social and health-related professions. The term “home office” appeared in just two percent of job advertisements. In the areas of crafts, construction and the environment it was included in 3.5 percent of the advertisements.

As a manager, home office is hardly possible

“With a view to the level of experience and qualifications, companies mentioned home office most often in job advertisements for young professionals, namely in 29 percent of all job advertisements placed,” says Index boss Grenz. Skilled workers with academic education and positions in project management were also offered home offices in around a quarter of the advertised jobs. At the top and bottom of the career ladder, however, working from home was and is less possible – a lot of responsibility and too little experience require increased presence.

Lots of home offices in big cities

Among the federal states, companies based in city states were particularly likely to offer home offices: in Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, up to 20 percent of job advertisements advertised home offices. The term “home office” was most rarely used for jobs advertised by companies from Saxony-Anhalt.

Among the top 10 cities offering home offices, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg take the first three places. Compared to the overall job market, there is a solid range of jobs in which working from home is permitted, especially in Cologne, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf – around 25 percent of the job offers in the period examined mentioned a home office option.

The home office offer is stagnating, as Index’s job market analysis shows. But at least three out of four companies in which home office is possible want to keep it unchanged. This emerges from a survey by the ifo Institute. “These results refute the view that the trend is going back to the office,” says ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour. “The clocks are not turning back to 2019.” Only twelve percent of the companies surveyed planned to impose strict requirements for working from home, and only four want to abolish the option completely. Eleven percent of companies even want to make the regulations even more flexible.

According to the Ifo Institute, the trend is towards an increased combination of face-to-face work and location-independent work. In typical office jobs, this leads to structured hybrid working models with fixed days of presence and the possibility of working from home on the other days.