Are you considering letting go of the office and sending your team remote? It’s a big move, and there’s a lot to consider. Many companies choose to transition slowly, with 43% of workplaces having half of their employees work from home and the other half in the office. 

If you’re on the fence about if it’s right for your business or not, knowing the work from home statistics and trends can help you make smart decisions and transition easier. 

Here’s a list of the 70 work from home statistics for 2021.

General Work from Home Statistics

  1. 30% of companies say that their company is 100% remote. 
  2. In 2019, 18.4% of employees said they worked from home less than once per month, while 14% said several times per week. 
  3. In 2019, the financial industry had the most remote workers, followed by professional and business services. 
  4. Leisure and hospitality had the lowest possibility of working from home. 
  5. In 2019, approximately 34.7 million full-time employees could work remotely in the U.S. 
  6. Google searches for the keywords “home office” and “remote working” have surged since 2020. 
  7. 35% of people report occasionally working remotely, while 16% report working remotely very frequently. 
  8. Out of the people working remotely, 83% are full-time employees, and 6% are small business owners. 
  9.  The largest reason for people working from home is personal preference, followed by the need to finish or catch up on work. 
  10. 91% of remote workers would recommend working remotely to a friend.  

Usage of the Cloud for Remote Work Statistics

  1. Companies are growing their adoption of cloud technology. In 2019, 32% of workers said that their organization used the cloud to store work documents.
  2. By 2024, the cloud email and collaboration market is expected to be worth $81 billion. That’s almost double what it was in 2020!
  3. The enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services totaled $96.5 billion in 2019. 
  4. In 2020, spending on cloud-based conferencing solutions was forecasted to grow to $4.1 billion. 
  5. Cloud Telephone was also a major growth segment with a growth of 8.9% in 2020 and 17.8% in 2021. 
  6. The public cloud management and security market were worth $14.9 billion in 2020.  

Technology and Software that Enable Working From Home Statistics

  1. Between 2015 and 2019, the market saw an increase of about $7 billion. 
  2. The collaboration market is expected to reach $13.58 billion in 2024. 
  3. The wired docking station, used for multi-monitor display setups, is predicted to have a market size of over $380 million by 2025.
  4. Work from home apps in China are growing at crazy rates. ByteDance Lark experienced a year-on-year increase of 6000%.
  5. The communication and collaboration tools market reached $47 billion in 2019. 
  6. In 2020, more than one-third of workplaces used Zoom frequently for team meetings.
  7.  The second leading collaboration tool was Microsoft Teams, with 19% of companies. 
  8.  The global Communication Platform as a Service (CMSaaS) market is projected to be $17.2 billion in 2023. 
  9.  On the other hand, the global market for social software and collaboration in the workplace is estimated to reach $4.8 billion by 2023. 
  10.  Microsoft Teams has been one of the fastest-growing platforms in recent months. Users have increased from 32 million in March 2019 to 75 million in April 2020. 
  11.  Slack had around 12 million daily active users in 2019. 
  12.  Slack’s daily active users are mostly based out of the U.S. Users mainly come from Great Britain, Japan, Germany, France, and Australia. 
  13.  Starting in 2020, 26% of businesses gave their employees more access to communication technology. 
  14.  In April 2020, Cisco’s video conferencing software, Wibex, had 25 billion minutes of video time. 
  15.  In June 2019, SalesForce made No. 1 on the list of biggest SaaS companies in terms of market capitalization (over $117 billion). 
  16.  Other large SaaS companies that became major competitors in 2020 include ServiceNow, Workday, and Shopify, which were valued between $30 and $50 billion. 
  17.  As far as the most adopted web conferencing technology of 2020, GoToWebinar had a market share of 30.68%. 
  18.  Google’s G Suite had a gigantic market share for office suite technologies in 2020, accounting for 50.6%.

The Benefits of Working Remotely Statistics

  1. The leading benefit of working from home is having flexible schedules, according to 32% of employees.
  2.  26% of employees said the second biggest benefit is being able to work from any location. 
  3.  According to working from home projections, global emissions could fall by 24 million MtCO2 per year if people continue working from home.
  4.  29% of Baby Boomers who work from home agree that not having to communte on a daily basis is the best part of working remotely. 
  5.  The younger generations, including Millennials and Gen Z, state that spending more time with family is a huge benefit of working remotely. 
  6.  Over 40% of people say the top three benefits from working from home are saving money, working from anywhere, and spending time with family. 
  7.  26% of Americans say that working from home improves their mental health and 34% say it reduces anxiety and stress. 
  8.  Overall, 51% of remote workers see more productivity and efficiency in their workdays.

User Access and Identity Management Statistics

  1. The information technology market size was worth $125.2 billion in 2020 and will hit $174.4 billion in 2024.
  2.  In 2019, 62% of security-aware IT professionals in North America stated that their company used two-factor authentication for identity management. 
  3.  Single sign-on for identity management was ranked second with a 52% usage rate. 
  4.  The global spending on information security products and services is predicted to skyrocket in the coming years as work from home positions are here to stay.
  5.  By 2024, the information and security market will reach almost $175 billion. 
  6.  In 2019, Cisco and Palo Alto networks held the highest market shares in the security appliance market, each with approximately a 14% market share.
  7.  83% of organizations use multi-factor authentication for employee access.
  8.  In 2019, over half of IT security practitioners said their organization had separate identity management systems for both the cloud and on-premise environments. 
  9.  However, there has been a decrease in organizations using protection for the cloud and on-premise security. 
  10.  Spending on cloud-based security solutions is expected to grow significantly between 2021 and 2023, reaching $252 billion. 
  11.  In 2019, it was found that passwords and PINs are the most common forms of identity technologies used across North America. 

Challenges of Working from Home Statistics 

  1. Baby boomers find the worst part about working from home to be the lack of socialization. 
  2.  The majority of Millennials and Gen Z say distractions are the worst part of working remotely.
  3.  More specifically, managing in-home distractions get the best of 47% of remote workers. 
  4.  In 2020, 21% of remote workers spent one hour per day on their phones when they should have been working. 
  5.  Just over 10% admitted that they spent over three hours distracted by their phones. 
  6.  Additionally, people who spend a lot of time on their phones said that it has caused them to have different work hours than usual. 
  7.  Another leading reason for a change in work hours is hangovers, according to 26.3% of remote workers. 

Change in Work From Home Trends Due to COVID-19

  1.  At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020), 20% of employees were allowed to work at home and did so.
  2.  When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, a quarter of companies in the U.S. who were not remote before the pandemic say they will move at least 10% of their office into permanent remote positions. 
  3.  28% of Americans who were forced to work at home during COVID-19 said they could focus much better at home. 
  4.  Only 9% of workers said their productivity level was much higher while working in the office. 
  5.  71% of people working from home during COVID-19 said they did not maintain normal working hours. 
  6.  Since more people started working from home during COVID-19, 71% say there is less pressure to prove that they are actually working. 
  7.  On the contrary, 27% of people report working more hours at home than they did in the office. 
  8.  Most people would like to continue working from home at least one day per week after COVID-19. 
  9.  Before the pandemic, 17% of Americans worked from home five days per week. During the pandemic, that percentage shifted to 44%.
  10.  29% of employees say their bosses became more available during the pandemic.

Is Work from Home Right For Your Business?

As the statistics suggest, working from home is increasing in popularity because of two factors: COVID-19 and companies realizing the benefits of remote work. 

Whether transitioning your employees into remote positions is right for you depends on your business’s specific needs. Is the industry you’re in naturally able to work from home? Do you think your team will rock it? Do you have enough budget to invest in technologies that make communicating and sharing work simple?

If the answer is yes, likely, you’ll also need to boost your online presence. The customers who once came to your store will now communicate with your business through online platforms. The first steps are establishing your online store, engaging more on social media, and creating a solid SEO strategy

We got our sources from Statista Premium.

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Georgi TodorovI work as an SEO Manager at Semrush, responsible for establishing new processes at the company. I love traveling, watching courses, reading books and spending time in nature. I am always happy to talk with new people and you can reach him at his Twitter or Linkedin. You can also read my own blog about online business
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