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They are mainly graduates, workers aged between 35 and 44, who are employed in the sectors of information and communication and financial and insurance activities. This is the identikit of the employed “in agile mode” traced by Istat in the recent report on the BES, published in mid-April. If in 2021, as a consequence of the COVID-19 epidemic, the use of working from home had reached its peak (14.8%). From 2022 we have witnessed a progressive reduction in the phenomenon. Between 2021 and 2022 the reduction was 2.6 percentage points, and in 2023 the share of employees who carried out agile work in the four weeks preceding the interview went from 12.2% to 12.0% (this is of just over 2.8 million individuals). Meanwhile, since April the emergency regulations have ceased to exist, and all the discipline of smart working is now referred to ordinary laws and company (and individual) agreements.
More agile workers in the 35-44 age group
On average in 2023, Istat recalls, the share of women working from home continues to be higher than that of men (13.4% compared to 11.0%), however the gap is reducing: the percentage for men remains unchanged, while for women it drops by 0.4 percentage points. The highest share of employed people working from home (13.3%) is observed among people aged between 35 and 44. In the years of the pandemic, 2020 and 2021, the highest percentages were recorded among those employed over 60 years of age, for whom, however, the most significant drop was observed in 2022 (over 4.5 percentage points).
Especially graduates work from home
The reduction affects high school graduates (-0.8 percentage points compared to 2022) and graduates (-0.6); but the latter remain the most affected by this measure (27.4% compared to 9.4% of high school graduates and just over 2% of people with at most a middle school diploma, which are essentially stable). Istat recalls that for graduates the increase between 2019 and 2020 was +20.5 points, much stronger than that observed among those employed with a diploma or with at most a middle school diploma (respectively, +8 .2 and +0.7) due to the greater possibility for the most qualified professions to carry out work remotely. Those employed in skilled and clerical professions are those who most often work from home (26.4% and 14.6% respectively), for the former the variation is more contained (-0.3 percentage points), while for the employees, the drop was 2.2 percentage points.
Smart working in Information and Financial Activities
Furthermore, as regards the sectors of economic activity, smart working remains most widespread in the Information and Communication sector (57.6%), although decreasing. Then there are financial and insurance activities (37.3%). For Public Administration and Education the decline between 2021 and 2022 was -9.7 and -11.6 percentage points respectively, in 2023 the two sectors show limited changes but in the opposite direction: for the first yes observes a reduction (-0.7, the value becomes equal to 13.4%), for the second an increase (+0.5, 21.5%).
