Bulgaria has lowest percentage in the EU of people who work from home
Bulgaria has the lowest percentage of people who work from home, at just 0.3 per cent, according to figures released on June 21 by EU statistics agency Eurostat.
The percentage of employed people aged 15 to 64 in the European Union (EU) who usually work from home was five per cent in 2017, Eurostat said.
This figure was highest in the Netherlands (13.7 per cent), followed by Luxembourg (12.7 per cent) and Finland (12.3 per cent), and lowest in Bulgaria (0.3 per cent) and Romania (0.4 per cent).
Working from home was slightly more common in the euro area (5.7 per cent of employed people) than in the EU as a whole.
The percentage of employed people in the EU who sometimes work from home has increased steadily over the years, from 7.7 per cent in 2008 to 9.6 per cent in 2017, although the figure in 2017 was down slightly from 2016 (9.8 per cent).
In the EU, more self-employed people usually worked from home (18.1 per cent) than employees (2.8 per cent). This was true in all member states.
In 2017, a slightly higher proportion of women in the EU usually worked from home (5.3 per cent) than men (4.7 per cent).
However, in a few EU countries, the situation was the reverse, with more men usually working from home than women. This was noticeably the case in the Netherlands (14.7 per cent of men, compared to 12.6 per cent of women) and Denmark (9.5 per cent compared to 7.6 per cent).
The frequency of working from home increases with age. Only 1.6 per cent of 15- 24 year-olds in the EU usually worked from home in 2017, rising to 4.7 per cent of 25-49 year-olds and 6.4 per cent of 50-64 year-olds.
The highest proportion of 15-24 year-olds who regularly worked from home was recorded in Luxembourg (10.4 per cent), way ahead of the next-closest member state, the Netherlands (4.2 per cent).
For the other age categories, the Netherlands came out top (14.8 per cent of 25-49 year-olds and 16.6 per cent of 50-64 year-olds), followed by Finland (13.1 per cent of 25-49 year-olds and 13.6 per cent of 50-64 year-olds).
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
