IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/econwp/202213.html

Home Office is here to stay? Access to Home Office and Remote Work Potentials across Swiss Industries

Author

Listed:
  • Essbaumer, Elisabeth

Abstract

This paper documents the remote potential across Swiss industries, relying on data provided by the Swiss Statistical Office. Overall, the obtained results show that 47.1% of jobs in the current Swiss economy can at least partly be performed from home. In comparison, only 25.8% of employees indicate that they work remotely. Consequently, the implementation of remote work could almost be doubled to fully exploit the existing potential. Furthermore, there exists a substantial variation across Swiss industries and for employees’ socio-demographic characteristics. Overall, Swiss industries are able to adopt remote work when required, which is demonstrated by the exploitation of previously untapped potentials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Essbaumer, Elisabeth, 2022. "Home Office is here to stay? Access to Home Office and Remote Work Potentials across Swiss Industries," Economics Working Paper Series 2213, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2022:13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-2213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Evan DeFilippis & Stephen Michael Impink & Madison Singell & Jeffrey T. Polzer & Raffaella Sadun, 2020. "Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work," NBER Working Papers 27612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Adams-Prassl, Abi & Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2020. "Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: Evidence from real time surveys," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    3. Nicholas Bloom & James Liang & John Roberts & Zhichun Jenny Ying, 2015. "Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(1), pages 165-218.
    4. Marta Angelici & Paola Profeta, 2024. "Smart Working: Work Flexibility Without Constraints," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(3), pages 1680-1705, March.
    5. Wöhner, Fabienne, 2022. "Work flexibly, travel less? The impact of telework and flextime on mobility behavior in Switzerland," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    6. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    7. Barrero, Jose Maria & Bloom, Nick & Davis, Steven J., 2020. "Why Working From Home Will Stick," SocArXiv wfdbe, Center for Open Science.
    8. Henderson, Dennis K. & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 1996. "Impacts of Center-Based Telecommuting on Travel and Emissions: Analysis of the Puget Sound Demonstration Project," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt1250382t, University of California Transportation Center.
    9. Alexandre Mas & Amanda Pallais, 2017. "Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3722-3759, December.
    10. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    11. Simon Mongey & Laura Pilossoph & Alexander Weinberg, 2021. "Which workers bear the burden of social distancing?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(3), pages 509-526, September.
    12. William Larson & Weihua Zhao, 2017. "Telework: Urban Form, Energy Consumption, And Greenhouse Gas Implications," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 714-735, April.
    13. Henderson, Dennis K. & Koenig, Brett E. & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 1996. "Using Travel Diary Data to Estimate the Emissions Impacts of Transportation Strategies: The Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt0g01v83p, University of California Transportation Center.
    14. Michael Gibbs & Friederike Mengel & Christoph Siemroth, 2023. "Work from Home and Productivity: Evidence from Personnel and Analytics Data on Information Technology Professionals," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 7-41.
    15. Eliot L. Sherman, 2020. "Discretionary Remote Working Helps Mothers Without Harming Non-mothers: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(3), pages 1351-1374, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burdett, Ashley & Etheridge, Ben & Tang, Li & Wang, Yikai, 2024. "Worker productivity during Covid-19 and adaptation to working from home," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    2. Gavoille, Nicolas & Hazans, Mihails, 2022. "Personality Traits, Remote Work and Productivity," IZA Discussion Papers 15486, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Erdsiek, Daniel & Rost, Vincent, 2022. "Working from home after COVID-19: Firms expect a persistent and intensive shift," ZEW Expert Briefs 22-06, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    4. Vij, Akshay & Souza, Flavio F. & Barrie, Helen & Anilan, V. & Sarmiento, Sergio & Washington, Lynette, 2023. "Employee preferences for working from home in Australia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 782-800.
    5. Arntz, Melanie & Ben Yahmed, Sarra & Berlingieri, Francesco, 2022. "Working from home, hours worked and wages: Heterogeneity by gender and parenthood," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    6. Bamieh, Omar & Ziegler, Lennart, 2022. "Are remote work options the new standard? Evidence from vacancy postings during the COVID-19 crisis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Nicholas Bloom & Arjun Ramani, 2021. "The donut effect of Covid-19 on cities," CEP Discussion Papers dp1793, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Adams-Prassl, Abi & Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2022. "Work that can be done from home: evidence on variation within and across occupations and industries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    9. Erdsiek, Daniel & Rost, Vincent, 2023. "How do managers form their expectations about working from home? Survey experiments on the perception of productivity," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-018, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    10. Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia & Victoria Vernon, 2022. "Telework, Wages, and Time Use in the United States," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 687-734, September.
    11. Luca Bonacini & Giovanni Gallo & Sergio Scicchitano, 2021. "Working from home and income inequality: risks of a ‘new normal’ with COVID-19," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 303-360, January.
    12. Christian Kagerl & Julia Starzetz, 2023. "Working from home for good? Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and what this means for the future of work," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(1), pages 229-265, January.
    13. Barrero, Jose Maria & Bloom, Nick & Davis, Steven J., 2020. "Why Working From Home Will Stick," SocArXiv wfdbe, Center for Open Science.
    14. Alipour, Jean-Victor & Falck, Oliver & Schüller, Simone, 2023. "Germany’s capacity to work from home," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    15. Kouki, Amairisa, 2023. "Beyond the “Comforts” of work from home: Child health and the female wage penalty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    16. Markus Nagler & Johannes Rincke & Erwin Winkler, 2024. "Working from home, commuting, and gender," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(3), pages 1-23, September.
    17. Christos A. Makridis, 2025. "The Allocation of Time and Remote Work," CESifo Working Paper Series 12363, CESifo.
    18. Bloom, Nicholas & Davis, Steven J. & Hansen, Stephen & Lambert, Peter John & Sadun, Raffaella & Taska, Bledi, 2023. "Remote work across jobs, companies and space," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121302, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Masayuki Morikawa, 2022. "Work‐from‐home productivity during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Evidence from Japan," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(2), pages 508-527, April.
    20. Lee, Kangoh, 2023. "Working from home as an economic and social change: A review," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2022:13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.