How common is remote working in UK Tech?

In 2019, an average of 27% of the UK’s workforce worked from home at least some of any given week. This increased to 37% in 2020 following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and this level (a combination of the red and dark blue lines in the graph below) sustained through the first half of 2021, even once lockdown restrictions had ended.

Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/businessandindividualattitudestowardsthefutureofhomeworkinguk/apriltomay2021

Across Europe, the percentage of people who worked from home regularly more than doubled from 5% pre-pandemic to 12.3% post-pandemic.

The UK’s technology sector is attracting an outsize proportion of remote working jobs. Despite providing around 4.2% of all jobs, according to Adzuna data the industry accounted for 30% of remote job vacancies in May 2021. By that time one in four IT vacancies were labelled remote.

As of September 2021, 38% of positions on cord were listed with the option of being remote and 82% with the option of being hybrid (note that these total more than 100 because positions can be listed with more than one remote working option).

Among positions advertised as Remote, 5% required onsite work once per fortnight, while 45% required no on-site work at all.

Among positions advertised as Hybrid, most (36.8%) required engineers to work onsite 3 days per week, with 32.6% requiring engineers to be onsite 4 days per week and 26.6% requiring 2 days per week.

Key Insights

• Following the pandemic, the percentage of UK workers who worked from home at least some of the time increased from 27% to 37%

• The tech industry accounts for 30% of the UK's advertised remote vacancies

• 38% of positions on cord have the option of being remote, while 82% have the option of being hybrid