Remote Working Statistics In Australia: How Popular Is It?

Remote work was steadily gaining popularity even before the pandemic. Before March 2020, the percentage of people regularly working from home had been increasing by about one percentage point every two years, according to the ABS, and 13% of Australians reported working from home all or most days.

By September 2020, 31% of Australians were working from home most days, a figure that dropped to 22% in May 2021 as lockdowns in parts of the country eased but jumped back up to 30% by April 2022. The latest ABS data from August 2023 shows that over one-third of the population works from home regularly.

While some employers are encouraging workers back to the office, others are using the promise of remote work to attract the best talent. An analysis of listings on job search engine Indeed in August 2024 found that 14.3% mentioned phrases like “work from home” or “work remotely, up from 12.2% a year ago and three times higher than before the pandemic.

Callam Pickering, senior economist at Indeed Hiring Lab says the number of remote jobs reflects strong demand from job seekers, with 2.4% of Australian searches on the platform containing the term “remote work”, more than five times higher than before the pandemic.

“Now, 2.4% of searches might not seem like a lot, but there are millions of different search terms job seekers use to find a job,” Pickering tells Forbes Advisor Australia.

“Outside of generic terms including ‘full-time’ or ‘part-time’, searching directly for ‘remote work’ is one of the most common ways Australian job seekers engage with the Indeed platform.”

If you are on the hunt for a career that will allow you to work remotely, your options are greater than ever before. Indeed’s analysis revealed almost 70% of occupations experienced increases in the share of remote job opportunities in the first half of 2024.

Tech is still one of the leading industries for jobs you can do from home, with one-third of job postings mentioning ‘remote work’—well above the average. That’s despite a shrinking labour market in the sector, with tech jobs accounting for just 5.3% of Australian job postings on the Indeed platform, down from a peak of 11.1% in September 2021.

But there are also more opportunities to work remotely in industries traditionally considered in-person before the pandemic. Indeed has recorded a significant uptick in the share of remote job postings in forestry and agriculture (up 10.5%), physicians and surgeons (up 5%) and real estate (up 4.7%) in the first half of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.

“We tend to think of some of these categories as being very physically intensive—you have to be actively doing them—but we need to remember that they include some of the back office-type roles and the flexibility comes in there,” Pickering says.

“When we look at doctors and nurses, a big part of their role would be in person, but what you tend to find now is that they might be spending one day a week working from home and doing all their paperwork.”

Working from home—whether in a dedicated home office setup or from the dining table— became a necessity during the pandemic and remains a pillar of flexible working arrangements. But once lockdowns were lifted and international borders reopened, the appeal of working from anywhere has given rise to a generation of digital nomads who travel while working remotely: more than 35 million people worldwide, according to one 2023 report.

While there are no confirmed stats on the number of Australians embracing digital nomadism, a 2024 YouGov survey of more than 800 Australians found that almost one in three have travelled for at least one week while working remotely. The poll also found that New Zealand was the most popular destination for Australian digital nomads to work from, followed by Japan and Singapore.

When it comes to the best countries to work from, the Global Remote Work Index ranks Denmark in the number one spot, followed by The Netherlands and Germany. The index, which is compiled by cybersecurity company NordLayer, ranks 108 countries’ remote work credentials based on cyber safety, economic safety, social safety and digital and physical infrastructure. Australia came in 25th position with Angola at the bottom of the list.

Australia’s share of remote job postings is almost identical to Indeed’s figures in the UK and Canada, but almost double that of the US and New Zealand.

Percentage of Indeed job listings that mention remote work or similar:

• Australia: 14.3%
• Canada: 14.3%
• UK: 14.4%
• United States: 7.7%
• New Zealand: 8.6%
• Spain: 20%

“[The US] never saw as big a surge in remote work opportunities as we did in Australia,” Pickering says. “Which makes sense, given that we had stricter lockdowns [during the pandemic] and that all flows through to us being more likely to work from home.”

Taking a broader view, the Centre for Economic Policy Research found that workers in Australia spend more time working from home than their counterparts in Europe or Asia.

The 2023 study found university graduates in Australia worked an average of 1.7 days per week from home, just below the combined average of 1.8 days for English-speaking countries including New Zealand, UK and the US.

By comparison, university graduates in European countries worked an average of 1.1 days remotely and those in Asia only clocked an average of 0.9 days.

So is working from home here to stay? Well, it depends on who you ask, and what company they work for.

Pickering says we could see a decline in remote work as the balance of power shifts towards employers.

“One of the reasons we think remote work has remained so popular and continues to be offered so frequently is because Australia’s labour market conditions have been very tight and employers often haven’t had much of a choice if they want to attract the best candidates,” he says.

“But there is that expectation that the labour market is going to soften over the next year or two… it’ll be interesting to see whether employers are so accommodating when the unemployment rate is much higher.”

On the flipside, he predicts many businesses will continue to use flexible working as a powerful recruitment tool.

“There have been big investments in getting work from home working effectively, and a lot of businesses also know that this is a really powerful benefit they’re offering,” he says.

“If their competitors force their employees back into the office then businesses that can offer that flexibility are going to be in a pretty good position to attract talent because we know that job seekers and employees just absolutely love that flexibility.”

—Additional editing: Kevin Pratt.