High-income families far more likely to have people working remotely
From April 2020 to June 2021, 30 per cent of employees in Canada performed most of their hours from home, up from just four per cent in 2016, according to a report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).
High-income families are far more likely to have people working from home, with 45 per cent of dual-earner salaried couples in the top 10 per cent of the earnings distribution having both spouses working from home, compared with just five per cent of those in the bottom 10 per cent of the earnings distribution.
Also, 57 per cent of dual-earner salaried couples in the top 10 per cent of the earnings distribution had both spouses holding jobs that could in principle be done from home. Meanwhile, the rate was 11 per cent for dual-earner salaried couples in the bottom 10 per cent of the earnings distribution.
Roughly seven in 10 workers in the finance and insurance and professional, scientific and technical services sectors worked from home during the said period. This is true for 65 per cent of those in information and cultural industries and 56 per cent of those in public administration.
Meanwhile, only five per cent of workers in the accommodation and food services sector managed to do the same.
In the private sector, working from home is much more likely among those working in large firms (36 per cent) compared with those in small organizations (18 per cent).
More than half of Canadian households had someone working from home over the past year, and many are unwilling to change their working arrangements, according to a separate survey by Angus Reid.
Regions, populations
Thirty per cent of workers in Ontario worked from home from April 2020 to June 2021, and 30 per cent of employees in Quebec did the same, according to StatCan. For Saskatchewan, the number is 20 per cent.
Meanwhile, between 17 per cent and 23 per cent of workers in the Atlantic provinces worked from home during that period.
Women (35 per cent) are also more likely to have worked from home compared with men (27 per cent), according to the report. Sixteen per cent of women aged 15 to 24 worked from home from April 2020 to June 2021, compared with 36 per cent of women aged 45 to 54. In contrast, the corresponding percentages were 12 per cent for men aged 15 to 24 and 28 per cent for those aged 45 to 54.
And 30 per cent of married men with children worked from home during the same period, compared with 39 per cent for their female counterparts.
A relatively high proportion (43 per cent) of men of Chinese origin worked from home during that period. This was almost three times the rate of 15 per cent observed among men of Filipino origin. Furthermore, 37 per cent of men of South Asian origin and 27 per cent of Black men worked from home from July 2020 to June 2021.
Working from home is also more common among women of Chinese origin (49 per cent), South Asian origin (36 per cent) and Black women (33 per cent) than among Filipino women (19 per cent).
One in three (33 per cent) employees currently working from home say that they will quit their job if forced to return to the workplace full time, according to a previous survey.
