As the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly in March 2020, many were ordered to stay at home, leading to a rise in remote work.
The EU agency Eurofound, which compiled data from over 250,000 people through seven e-surveys on working conditions before and during the pandemic, found that COVID-19 brought about a rapid pivot to remote work that’s still in place today.
Eurofound researcher Oscar Vargas Llave told Euronews Next that at the pandemic’s peak, 23 per cent of the EU’s workforce was working from home, up from just 14 per cent in 2019.
In a 2022 report, Eurofound said remote work would not have grown as much until 2027 had the pandemic never happened.
Now that the masks are off and social distancing is a memory, what impact did the COVID-19 pandemic have on how we work and what’s to come in the next five years?
'We are in a plateau'
Vargas Llave said the number of employees working either full-time remote or in a hybrid arrangement since the pandemic has stabilised.
Eurostat's 2023 Labour Force Survey found that 22.2 per cent of EU adults work from home "usually" or "sometimes," down from just over 24 per cent in 2021.
This stabilisation of remote and hybrid workers goes against what people assumed would be a sharp drop in remote work after the pandemic’s end, Vargas Llave said.
"We are in a plateau," Vargas Llave said. "The possibility of working from home hasn’t [been] sedimented in European workplaces".
He added, however, that the percentage of workers that are fully remote has always been small and that this was exceptional during COVID-19.
Whether an employee can work remotely after the pandemic depends on the type of job they are doing, Vargas Llave said.
For example, jobs in informational technology (IT), finance, and education are more likely to be done remotely, according to the 2022 Eurofound report, with agriculture, construction and hospitality being done on location.
Nhlamu Dlomu, the global head of people at consulting firm KPMG, said that the client-facing roles at her organisation often require in-person meetings and are less likely to be fully remote.
Ultimately, Dlomu said it’s up to each manager to work out with their employees how often to work on-site or from home.
Vargas Llave and Dlomu say that KPMG’s model reflects what other companies are doing because most hybrid or full-time remote conditions are often agreed on by an employee and manager.
'Mismatch' between what employees and companies want
LinkedIn figures for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa show that almost two in five jobs posted on the platform are hybrid, while fully remote jobs only make up around five per cent of posts in the region, down from a peak of 11 per cent in 2021.
Tamara Basic Vasiljev, LinkedIn’s head economist for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said that full remote postings accounted for just 1 percent of all open roles on the site before COVID-19.
Vasiljev said that companies encouraged remote job offers between 2021 and 2023 because they recognised "flexibility as a way to attract talent".
Now they are reducing these postings to favour "in-person collaboration, productivity and culture," she said.
In 2025, remote job postings had triple the interest of hybrid or full-time office positions, Vasiljev continued, signalling a "mismatch" between what employees want and what is offered.
"This gap between supply and demand signals that professionals are still seeking flexibility even as employers pivot to hybrid," Vasiljev wrote in an email to Euronews Next.
The biggest gap is in the Netherlands, where demand is six times higher for these roles than what is available on LinkedIn, Vasiljev continued.
She chalks this difference up to professionals in this country that want to "reduce commuting time, balance caregiving responsibilities, or work internationally".
Some markets like Germany buck the trend. Job seekers there would have seen a 25 per cent year-over-year increase in open hybrid roles, Vasiljev said, because the country’s competitive labour market means flexibility is still a way to attract talent.
Remote-first jobs not equal throughout the EU
The number of remote workers varies greatly throughout the European Union, Vargas Llave said.
Data from the Eurostat Labour Force Survey says the highest number of remote workers can be found in the Netherlands, where 52 per cent of workers have at least some teleworking hours in 2023.
Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Luxembourg have between 40 and 45 per cent of their workforce that works at least part-time remotely, the data found. Norway and Iceland, while outside the EU, are also in this range.
New EU members Bulgaria and Romania have the least number of part-time remote workers, at 2 and 3 per cent, respectively.
"There are fewer jobs [in Bulgaria and Romania] that use extensively digital tools, but it also has to do with the culture of work," Vargas Llave said.
"This flexibility of being able to work anywhere at any time is not developed".
The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries had high rates of remote work even before the pandemic, so seeing a larger adoption post-pandemic isn’t surprising to Vargas Llave.
The future is hybrid
Vargas Llave said most employees and companies prefer a hybrid work model, because they are able to get some socialisation in with their colleagues and work collaboratively when need be.
Eurofound’s 2024 quality of life study found that the desire to work exclusively from home has risen from 13 per cent in 2020 to 24 per cent in 2024, and the number who would like to work from home several times a week is still over 50 per cent for both men and women.
However, Dlomu said there are still some pressure points for corporations, like how to maintain a good company culture when people are not together.
Still, she believes that the pattern of hybrid work we have now is one that will still be there by 2030.
"It felt like hybrid at its beginnings was a little bit unsettling for some, as people were trying to find their rhythm… I think that that has changed," Dlomu said. "It’s become more nuanced".
By 2030, Vargas Llave believes there will be "a very low increase" of workers working remotely, because there will be more jobs related to the digital workplace.
There will still never be "a situation of working only from home again," Vargas Llave said, noting that that was a pandemic-era exception.
The discrepancy between countries will also continue, Vargas Llave predicts, despite EU initiatives that encourage workplaces to adopt flexible work policies.
To Dlomu, the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic is how it changed the way that people communicate.
"We all lost people, we all got ill… so it was a tough time for all of us as human beings," she said.
"But at the same time, the something that emerged… is we’ve improved the way that we communicate using technology".
