While there are exceptions to the rule, working from home is mostly a modern phenomenon and prior to the pandemic less than 6% of employees worked exclusively from home. This percentage soared to 49% in April 2020, according to Statista, which also reported on 6 June that, over three years later in May 2023, 39% of workers said that they had worked at home at some point in the previous week, and 73% had travelled to work at least once during the previous week.
Looking at the drop from 49% April 2020 to 39% in May 2023, it would be easy to assume that the percentage of employees working from home is gradually going back down, post-pandemic. However, a year earlier (in May 2022), when the pandemic was already over and restrictions had been lifted for 10 months, 37% of people had worked from home and 75% had been to the office, so not only is the percentage of people working from home not going down, but it has actually started to rise again in the past 12 months.
Obviously, there is a big grey area to distinguish between ‘working from home on a Monday’ and ‘showing your face at the office on Friday’ because the rest of the office is going ‘out on the lash’ after work.
Consultancy Advanced Workplace Associates surveyed 43 offices in the UK, representing nearly 50,000 people, in June and July last year. It found that before the pandemic, staff went into the office an average of 3.8 days a week, while post-pandemic, this had reduced to an average of 1.5 days per week.
In a large city like London, which has a congestion charge and extortionate parking fees, the best guide is to look at the number of people using public transport as that is how many workers still commute to the office. However, when looking at data provided by Transport for London (TfL), it reveals that the number of monthly journeys in the capital by bus, underground (tube), and DLR (Docklands Light Railway) were already steadily declining in the five years leading up to the pandemic (2014-2019).
At the time of writing, the most recent data was for April 2023. If we compare April 2015 to April 2019, bus journeys fell by 23%, tube journeys were down by 11% and DLR journeys were down by 13%. It is worth noting that the overall population of London actually increased by 6% during this period, which was several years before the Elizabeth Line opened.
