Working from home in the EU settled at 23%, and hybrid now leads

In 2025, 23.0% of employed people aged 15 to 64 in the European Union worked from home at least some of the time, up from 14.4% in 2019 and close to the 2021 peak of 24.1%. What changed after the pandemic is the form: the share working from home usually fell from 13.3% in 2021 to 8.8%, while the share doing so only sometimes rose from 10.8% to 14.2%, a record for the series.

This study analyses Eurostat Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) data for 2015 to 2025, published on 30 October 2026, across all 27 member states, by professional status and by age. It combines the home-working shares with Eurostat employment totals to estimate how many people are involved. No Edworking customer, team or usage data was used.

• 23.0% of employed people aged 15 to 64 in the EU worked from home usually or sometimes in 2025, against 14.4% in 2019. Applied to 201.6 million employed people, that is roughly 46 million workers, up from about 28 million in 2019.
• The mix shifted back toward hybrid. In 2021, 44.8% of home workers did so only sometimes; in 2025 the figure was 61.7%, about the same proportion as before the pandemic (62.5% in 2019), but on a much larger base.
• Occasional home working rose in all 27 member states between 2019 and 2025. Usual home working fell from its 2021 level in 26 of 27 (Slovakia was the exception) and is now below its 2019 level in the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg and Italy.
• The gap between countries is 49 percentage points: 52.3% of employed people in the Netherlands worked from home at least sometimes in 2025, against 3.6% in Romania. Eight countries were at 30% or more; five were below 10%.
• Employees drove the change. Their home-working share rose from 11.1% to 20.7% between 2019 and 2025, while the self-employed moved from 35.8% to 38.4%.

Debates about remote work often treat it as a binary: an office job or a remote job. Official labour statistics show that most home working in Europe is neither. Most people who work from home do it on some days, not most days.

The EU Labour Force Survey separates people who work from home "usually" (at least half of the days they worked in a four-week reference period) from those who do so "sometimes" (less often). Following both series through the pandemic shows whether the 2020 to 2021 shift to home working was reversed, kept or reshaped, and where in Europe it stuck.

The answer matters for how teams plan offices, meetings and communication. A workforce that splits its week between home and office needs different routines than a fully remote or fully on-site one.

• How did the share of EU workers who work from home change between 2019, the 2021 peak and 2025?
• Did the balance between usual and occasional home working change?
• How large are the differences between member states, and did every country follow the same path?
• Which groups of workers, by professional status and age, account for the change?

From 2015 to 2019 the EU share of employed people working from home was stable at 13% to 14%. It jumped to 20.7% in 2020 and 24.1% in 2021, then eased to 22.4% in 2022 and has stayed between 22.2% and 23.0% since. The 2025 value of 23.0% is 8.6 percentage points above 2019, about 1.6 times the pre-pandemic level.

Combined with Eurostat's employment total of 201.6 million people aged 15 to 64 in 2025, the share corresponds to roughly 46.4 million people working from home at least sometimes: about 17.7 million usually and 28.6 million sometimes. In 2019 the equivalent total was about 28.1 million.

The composition moved in two directions. Usual home working peaked at 13.3% in 2021, fell to 10.0% in 2022 and has held at 8.8% to 8.9% since. Occasional home working kept rising, from 9.0% in 2019 and 10.8% in 2021 to 14.2% in 2025, the highest value since the series began.

As a result, the share of home workers who work from home only sometimes fell from 62.5% in 2019 to 44.8% in 2021, then recovered to 61.7% in 2025. The pre-pandemic balance is back, but on a base about 60% larger: both the usual and the occasional shares are roughly 1.6 times their 2019 levels.

Every member state had a higher share of home working in 2025 than in 2019, but levels differ widely. The Netherlands (52.3%), Sweden (44.5%), Luxembourg (42.9%), Finland (41.5%), Denmark (40.7%), Belgium (37.1%), Ireland (35.8%) and France (35.5%) were all at 30% or more. Bulgaria (4.0%), Romania (3.6%), Greece (6.7%), Italy (8.2%) and Hungary (9.8%) were below 10%. The median member state was at 19.2%.

The largest increases since 2019 were in Ireland (15.9 points), the Netherlands (15.2), Malta (14.3), France (12.7), Belgium (12.5), Denmark (12.2) and Germany (12.1). Slovenia and Greece rose by 1.4 points and Poland by 1.8.

Occasional home working rose in all 27 countries. Usual home working was lower in 2025 than in 2021 everywhere except Slovakia, and in four countries (the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg and Italy) it is now below its 2019 level. In the Netherlands, 41.0% of employed people worked from home sometimes and 11.3% usually. Germany, Ireland, Spain and Latvia were the only member states where usual home working was at least as common as occasional home working in 2025.

Before the pandemic, home working was mostly a feature of self-employment. In 2019, 35.8% of the self-employed worked from home at least sometimes, against 11.1% of employees. By 2025 the employee share had nearly doubled to 20.7%, while the self-employed share rose only to 38.4%.

Among employees, usual home working went from 3.2% in 2019 to 7.3% in 2025, and occasional home working from 7.9% to 13.4%.

In 2025, 25.6% of employed people aged 25 to 49 worked from home at least sometimes, against 21.5% of those aged 50 to 64 and 10.5% of those aged 15 to 24. Workers aged 65 and over, a much smaller group, had the highest share (26.8%). In 2019 the 25 to 49 and 50 to 64 groups were level at 15.3%; since then the prime-age group has pulled ahead by about 4 points.

Women were slightly more likely than men to work from home in 2025 (24.1% against 22.1%).

The data do not support the idea that Europe is "going back to the office". Home working in 2025 was close to its pandemic peak and well above 2019 in every member state. They also do not support the idea that full remote work became the norm. Usual home working is well below its 2021 peak, and most home workers now split their time.

The most plausible reading is a settlement: employers and employees kept part of the flexibility gained in 2020 and 2021 and turned it into a few home days a week or month. The growth among employees, rather than the self-employed, is consistent with that reading, since employees' working arrangements are set with an employer.

The cross-country gap is large and persistent. It likely reflects differences in occupation and sector mix, digital infrastructure, housing, commuting and national rules on the right to request remote work. This study does not test those explanations.

For managers of small and mid-sized teams, the dominant European pattern is mixed presence, not full remote work. That has concrete consequences:

• design meetings for mixed rooms by default, with an agenda, shared notes and decisions written down where everyone can see them;
• agree which work happens on shared office days and which needs uninterrupted time at home;
• keep project status, files and decisions in one shared place so that people who were not in the office that day are not left behind;
• write a short team working agreement that covers response times, core hours and how to hand work over;
• when hiring across Europe, expect different norms by country: a hybrid offer is standard in the Netherlands or the Nordics and still rare in Romania or Bulgaria.

Edworking's guides to remote team management and async handoffs cover these routines in more detail.

In 2025, just under a quarter of the EU workforce worked from home at least some of the time, about 46 million people and 1.6 times the 2019 share. The post-pandemic change was not a retreat but a reshaping: usual home working has fallen since 2021, while occasional home working reached a record and rose in every member state. Hybrid, not fully remote, is the European norm, with large differences between the north-west of the continent and the south-east.

Source

All shares come from the Eurostat dataset Employed persons working from home by professional status (lfsa_ehomp), last updated 30 October 2026 and extracted on 5 November 2026 through the Eurostat dissemination API. Values are annual averages of the EU Labour Force Survey for employed persons aged 15 to 64 unless an age group is stated. The EU-27 aggregate is the 2020 composition.

Employment totals come from Employment by sex, age and citizenship (lfsa_egan), employed persons aged 15 to 64, all citizenships: 194.8 million in 2019 and 201.6 million in 2025.

Definitions

Eurostat publishes three frequencies: usually, sometimes and never. "Usually" covers people who worked from home on at least half of the days they worked in the four-week reference period; "sometimes" covers people who did so less often. This study uses "any home working" for the sum of usually and sometimes, and "hybrid" as shorthand for working from home sometimes.

Calculations

All figures were computed in Python from the API response:

• any home working = usually + sometimes (EU 2025: 8.8 + 14.2 = 23.0%);
• change since 2019 = share in 2025 minus share in 2019, in percentage points;
• hybrid share of home workers = sometimes / (usually + sometimes) (EU 2025: 14.2 / 23.0 = 61.7%);
• estimated workers = share x employed persons aged 15 to 64 (2025: 23.0% x 201.6 million = 46.4 million; usually 17.7 million; sometimes 28.6 million);
• country counts compare the 27 member states only.

Headline values were checked against the published Eurostat table; for example, the 2025 usual home working shares (EU 8.8%, Finland 20.5%, Romania 1.3%) match the dataset.

Eurostat marks a break in series for 2021, when the Integrated European Social Statistics framework regulation changed how the Labour Force Survey is run. Comparisons across 2021, including 2019 against 2025, combine two survey designs and should be read as broad changes, not precise ones.

Some national values carry Eurostat flags: the 2025 values for France and Spain are marked "definition differs", and the 2019 values for Poland and Bulgaria are marked as breaks in series. They are shown with notes in the figures.

The survey measures where people worked, not whether their job could be done from home or whether they would prefer to. It does not distinguish home working agreed with an employer from informal work done at home outside hours. The estimates of worker numbers are derived from rounded percentages and are approximations.

Differences between countries and groups are descriptive. This study does not estimate causes, productivity effects or wellbeing outcomes. It has not been peer reviewed.

• Eurostat, Employed persons working from home by professional status, % of total employment (lfsa_ehomp), updated 30 October 2026.
• Eurostat, Employment by sex, age and citizenship (lfsa_egan).
• Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey methodology.
• European Union, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2240, technical items of the Labour Force Survey from 2021.

This study was produced by Edworking with AI-assisted data processing and writing, using public Eurostat data only. Edworking sells collaboration software for remote and hybrid teams and has a commercial interest in how people work. No Edworking customer, team or usage data was used, and the analysis does not evaluate any product. It is editorial research, not a peer-reviewed paper.

Edworking Team (2026). "Working from home in the EU settled at 23%, and hybrid now leads." Edworking Research. https://edworking.com/research/eu-work-from-home-hybrid-shift-2025