Page 4 - IDEA Home office covid-19 rijen 23 2020

KOLIK NÁS MŮŽE PRACOVAT Z DOMOVA?
IDEA 2020
IDEA anti COVID-19 # 23
How many of us can work from home? OCTOBER 20202
MATĚJ BAJGAR, PETR JANSKÝ, MAREK ŠEDIVÝ
Summary
• How well our society and economy can face the Covid-19 epidemic depends, among many other things, on how much work can be done remotely, i.e. from home. Work from home also has the potential to increase businesses’ productivity and the living standards of their staff, regardless of the epidemic, but it also brings with it some undesirable phenomena.
• This study presents estimates of the proportion of the Czech working population who could work from home, based on detailed data, using an internationally recognised methodology of professional classification with Czech data.
• Our estimates show that roughly one third of all workers in the Czech Republic are capable of carrying out their work from home. This proportion is comparable with those in similarly economically developed countries and approximately reflects the share of workers who did work from home during the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic in spring 2020.
• The ability to work from home is distributed rather unequally across professional sectors, regions and workers' levels of education. While four out of five employees in the financial sector and the IT and communications sector can work from home, only one in five employees in agriculture and in culture and leisure can do the same. Most university educated workers can work from home, but only one in ten workers without school leaving exams. In Prague, approximately half of the working population can work from home, whereas in other regions of the country this is only possible for around one quarter.
• Public policies, legislative and other regulatory measures should react more to the opportunity, particularities and needs for effective use of remote working in both the public and private sectors. Under pressure of the circumstances of the Covid-19 era, technologies that enable and facilitate working from home may be expected to develop faster than ever before. The structure of the Czech economy - in terms of structures and professions - can also be expected to develop in ways that are more accommodating of remote working.
2 This study represents the authors’ own views and not the official position of the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Economics Institute nor of the Charles University Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE). The authors are grateful to Daniel Münich for his valuable comments and advice. The study was produced with support from the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of its AV21 Strategy and from the Experientia Foundation.
2