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Home office: boom stopped! Which industries still benefit?
Western Pomerania-Rügen shows low home office offers (approx. 5%). Despite stable demand, differences between sectors and regions are increasing.
Home office: boom stopped! Which industries still benefit?
In recent years, the home office in Germany has experienced a real boom, which was particularly fueled by the corona pandemic. At that time, the proportion of job advertisements that offered home office options rose to well over 20 percent. But since 2023 the numbers have stagnated at around 20 percent, so you have to ask yourself: Where are we today when it comes to flexibility in the workplace?
Loud work-abc.de The current figures show that before 2019, only less than 5 percent of job advertisements contained a reference to working from home. The boost came with the pandemic, but now developments are falling short of expectations. The home office rate is particularly high in the large cities of Cologne, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, with values of 35.8 percent in Cologne. In contrast, regions such as Western Pomerania-Rügen or Wartburgkreis can be found on the other side of the scale with only around 5 percent.
Standstill and industry differences
Although the home office model has become firmly established, current analyzes show that the visibility of remote work has fallen sharply. In March 2024, the proportion of home office offers in job advertisements was still 47 percent, but in the second quarter of 2025 it was only 41 percent onpulson.de reported. This clearly shows that there are big differences between the different industries.
The highest offer rates can be found in the finance and insurance industry as well as in IT, where up to 77.3 percent of positions allow home office. This contrasts with industries such as healthcare, where only 13 percent offer home office options. It is important to strike a balance between flexibility for employees and operational requirements, emphasizes Dr. Wolfgang Achilles from Jobware.
The new normal?
How statista.com notes, the home office has established itself as a flexible working model that is particularly suitable for office work like this that requires a telephone and laptop. Around a quarter of employees are now working from home even after the pandemic. In the healthcare sector, however, this proportion is negligible at only around 6 percent.
The advantages for employees are clear: time savings through no commute, a better work-life balance and flexibility in organizing the working day are just some of the positive aspects. However, there are also downsides, such as the lack of personal contact with colleagues and the sometimes difficult separation of work and private life.
There is also no lack of technical requirements. Around 92 percent of households in Germany have access to the internet, and communication tools such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom are widely used. Nevertheless, it turns out that many companies are sticking to old structures and are therefore not taking full advantage of the advantages of working from home.
The way we work continues to be in jeopardy. While the demand for home offices among applicants is increasing, many industries are experiencing a standstill in the corresponding offers. It remains to be seen whether and how companies will adapt in the coming years in order to compete for skilled workers.