Remote work rate in Germany last year returned to pandemic era: Data

The level of remote work in Germany's workforce returned to its pandemic-era peak, with around a quarter of the country's employees working remotely in 2025, as global oil shortages and surging fuel prices encouraged more people to work from home, the country’s statistical office Destatis said on Wednesday.

Around 25% of workers in Germany worked remotely last year, up from 24% in 2024 and 23% in 2023, the data showed.

The growing shift toward remote work signals a lasting transformation in the country’s labor market compared with pre-pandemic norms, as only 13% of the German workforce worked remotely in 2019.

The overall proportion of remote workers has returned to 2021 levels but the intensity of home-office use softened, as data showed that only 24% of remote workers worked entirely from home versus 40% during the apex of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

Nearly half of all remote workers, or 46% of them specifically, spent most of their workdays in the office rather than at home last year.

The levels of working remotely varied across sectors and company sizes, with information technology (IT), business administration, and management consulting sectors leading the pack with 74% of their workforces working from home at least occasionally, the data showed.

Remote work remained quite limited in the fields of hospitality, landscaping, and retail, with shares of just 6%, 7%, and 10%, respectively.

The data showed that workers aged 35–44 were the most likely to work from home, at 30%, which may reflect a need to balance work and family obligations, the report said.

By contrast, employees aged 15–24 were the least likely to work remotely, at 10%, a trend the report attributed to early-stage vocational training.

Germany's remote work rate was slightly above the EU average of 23% in 2025, while the Netherlands led the bloc with 52% of its workforce working from home or remotely, followed by Sweden at 45% and Luxembourg at 43%.

Romania and Bulgaria posted the lowest rates of working remotely in the EU at 4% each, the data showed.