Bulgaria had the lowest percentage in the European Union of people working from home in 2020, at 1.2 per cent compared with an EU average of 12.3 per cent in the 15-64 age group, the bloc’s statistics agency Eurostat said on May 17.

The social distancing measures that were introduced as a response to the Covd-19 pandemic forced many people to work from home, Eurostat said.

This resulted in a sharp increase, compared with an average of about five per cent over the past decade, the statistics agency said.

In previous years, the share of self-employed persons who reported that they usually work from home has been consistently higher than the share of employees in the same situation.

However, the gap became smaller in 2020 as the share of employees who usually work from home increased from 3.2 per cent in 2019 to 10.8 per cent, while the share for the self-employed increased to a smaller extent: from 19.4 per cent in 2019 to 22 per cent in 2020.

There are different trends according to the age and sex of workers when it comes to home working, Eurostat said.

In 2020, a higher share of women (13.2 per cent) reported that they usually worked from home than men (11.5 per cent).

Compared with other age groups, younger people were less likely to work from home in 2020: only 6.3 per cent of those aged 15-24 reported that they usually worked from home, compared with 13 per cent of those aged between 25-49 and 12.4% of those aged 50-64

Finland topped the list of the EU member states for home working, with 25.1 per cent of employed people usually working from home in 2020.

Finland was followed by Luxembourg (23.1 per cent) and Ireland (21.5 per cent).

In contrast, the lowest shares of home-workers were reported in Bulgaria (1.2 per cent), Romania (2.5 per cent), Croatia (3.1 per cent) and Hungary (3.6 per cent), Eurostat said