For two years in a row, the proportion of people working from home fell, the so-called home office. In 2024, there were almost 6.6 million people who carried out professional activities where they lived. In 2022, this number exceeded 6.7 million.
In terms of proportion, the reduction was from 8.4% to 7.9% of workers. The inflection point was in 2023, when 6.61 million were working from home (8.2% of the total).
The finding – which represents a reversal in the growing trend that had been accentuated by the covid-19 pandemic – is part of a special edition of the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad Contínua), released this Wednesday (19), in Rio de Janeiro, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
>> Read the other reports from Brazil Agency about this edition of Pnad Contínua
The study contains annual data since 2012, except for 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic that made data collection unfeasible.
The proportions indicated by IBGE refer to the universe of 82.9 million workers in 2024. According to the institute’s criteria, this group excludes employees in the public sector and domestic work.
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Pandemic effect
According to the research analyst, William Kratochwill, the classification of work at home also applies to people who adhere to the coworking (shared offices).
“People say: ‘I work from home’, but they don’t necessarily go to work at home, they can choose to go to a coworking”, he ponders.
The survey shows that women were the majority in home office. They accounted for 61.6% of workers in this condition.
Looking at the total number of workers by sex, 13% of women were in home office. Among men, the share was 4.9%.
The IBGE researcher states that work at home “clearly picked up after the pandemic”.
In 2012, the proportion of people in this condition was 3.6%. In 2019, it stood at 5.8%, reaching its highest point in 2022 (8.4%), before regressing in the last two years.
“But it is still at a higher level than what we had before the pandemic period and new technologies”, assures Kratochwill.
Dissatisfaction
The decrease in home office It is a movement that has caused dissatisfaction in some companies. At the beginning of this month, Nubank, one of the largest banks in the country, announced a gradual regression in working from home.
The dissatisfaction ended with the dismissal of 12 employees, according to the Union of Bank Workers and Financial Workers of São Paulo, Osasco and Region.
In March, Petrobras employees staged a strike against the reduction in teleworking, among other reasons.
See the share of people according to their place of work:
– establishment of own enterprise: 59.4%
– place designated by the employer, boss or customer: 14.2%
– farm, ranch, farm, farm, etc.: 8.6%
– place of residence: 7.9%
– motor vehicle: 4.9%
– public road or area: 2.2%
– establishment of another enterprise: 1.6%
– domicile of the employer, boss, partner or customer: 0.9%
– other location: 0.2%
One detail is that workers who carry out activities in motor vehicles increased from 3.7% in 2012 to 4.9% in 2024. For Kratochwill, this scenario reflects the emergence of application services such as Uber and 99.
“There is certainly an impact from passenger transport,” he says. “But this new wave of food truck (sale of food in vehicles). Each one, a little bit, contributes to this”, he adds.
In the vehicle work category, women make up just 5.4% of the total number of workers.
Of all the men in the research universe, 7.5% work in the vehicle. Among women, the share is 0.7%.
