More people working from home while those doing ‘home duties’ fall

The number of people whose full-time role is performing “home duties” has fallen by a third since before the pandemic.

Sarah Collins

The number of people working mostly from home has tripled since the pandemic, while the numbers whose full-time role is performing “home duties” fell by a third.

Central Statistics Office data show that 22.5pc of people were “usually” working from home - defined as being at home for at least half of their total days worked - in the three months to September, compared to 7.3pc in the same period of 2019.

The number of people usually working from home was highest in Dublin, at 30pc, while border countries had the highest numbers of people never working from home, at 79.3pc.

At the same time, the number of people whose primary economic activity was “fulfilling home duties” fell by 33.6pc in three years.

Slightly more women are working full time and slightly fewer are part-time, compared to pre-pandemic levels, the CSO said.

Full-time employees were 40.7pc female in the third quarter of 2022, up from 39.5pc in the same period in 2019.

Part-time employees are now 67.5pc female, down from 70.4pc in 2019.

Females accounted for 46.3pc of total persons in employment in the third quarter, a slight increase from 45.8pc in 2019.

The data ties in with recent Central Bank of Ireland research showing female employment reached a record high of around 60pc of the workforce in 2021.

But the bank said the trend was not ushered in by Covid work-from-home rules, but is a longer-term trend, which saw more women over 35 joining and staying in the workforce.

Nine out of every ten employees (90.5pc) were in permanent employment in the third quarter this year, the CSO data also showed.

Self-employed people worked an average of 6.6 hours more than employees in the third quarter this year.

The highest number of people were employed in the ‘professional’ group.