Flexible working includes several related but different measures: hybrid work, telework or working at home for pay, the ability to work at home, and control over start and end times. The statistics below show how participation varies by country, occupation and worker characteristics, and how workers describe flexibility and trust.
Key Flexible Working Statistics
The most useful headline figures are:
- In Great Britain, 28% of working adults hybrid worked between 8 January and 30 March 2025.
- In the United States, 22.9% of people at work teleworked in the first quarter of 2024, up from 19.6% a year earlier.
- 35.5 million people in the United States teleworked or worked at home for pay in Q1 2024, 5.1 million more than a year earlier.
- 37% of U.S. wage and salary workers could work at home in the 2024–25 average, while 34% worked at home at least occasionally.
- 41% of Great Britain workers with a degree or equivalent hybrid worked in January–March 2025, compared with 4% of those with no qualifications.
- 45% of Great Britain workers earning £50,000 or more hybrid worked in January–March 2025, compared with 8% earning under £20,000.
- 36% of Great Britain workers aged 30–49 hybrid worked in January–March 2025, compared with 19% of those aged 16–29.
- 34% of full-time Great Britain workers hybrid worked in January–March 2025, compared with 18% of part-time workers.
- 24.9% of U.S. women and 21.1% of U.S. men teleworked in Q1 2024.
- 37.9% of U.S. workers in management, professional and related occupations teleworked in Q1 2024, compared with 5.4% in service occupations.
- Among U.S. teleworkers, 47.9% teleworked all hours in Q1 2024, while 52.1% teleworked some hours.
- Across 23 countries, average full paid days worked from home fell from about 1.55 per week in 2022 to 1.23 in late 2024 or early 2025.
- 57% of U.S. wage and salary workers had schedules allowing variable start and end times in the 2024–25 average.
- 69% of U.S. wage and salary workers said taking an hour or two off during work hours was not difficult in the 2024–25 average.
- 79% of consulted OECD/LiveTiles teleworkers were satisfied with work-life balance in the 2022 survey reported in 2023, compared with 62% of those not consulted.
- 82% of employees currently teleworking said they would switch jobs to keep teleworking if their employer stopped allowing it, in the 2022 OECD/LiveTiles survey.
Contents
- Scale and recent trends
- Education, occupation and income
- Age, sex, disability and employment status
- Work-from-home frequency and global trends
- Flexible schedules, notice and time-off access
- Trust, retention and employee experience
Flexible Working Statistics: Scale and Recent Trends
The Office for National Statistics measured hybrid working by asking whether employed adults had worked from home and travelled to work in the previous seven days. This includes regular and irregular patterns, so it is not a count of people following a fixed weekly office schedule.
- In Great Britain, 28% of working adults hybrid worked from 8 January to 30 March 2025. Office for National Statistics, “Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?”
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPS estimates put telework at 22.9% of people at work in Q1 2024, compared with 19.6% in Q1 2023. The estimates are not seasonally adjusted. BLS, “Telework trends”
- The number of people teleworking or working at home for pay in the United States reached 35.5 million in Q1 2024, an increase of 5.1 million year over year. The count covers people at work during the CPS reference week. BLS, “Telework trends”
A separate BLS measure describes access and occasional use among wage and salary workers’ main jobs. It excludes self-employed workers and reports a 2024–25 average rather than a single reference week.
| U.S. measure, 2024–25 average | Share of wage and salary workers |
|---|---|
| Could work at home | 37% |
| Worked at home at least occasionally | 34% |
| Had days working only at home | 28% |
Source: BLS, “Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules Summary – 2025 A01 Results”. Working only at home on some days is not the same as being fully remote every week.
Longer-term estimates show a sharp change followed by partial reversal. Work-from-home days represented about 5–7% of paid workdays in the United States in 2019, nearly 60% during spring 2020 lockdowns and about 28% by mid-2023; the synthesis uses multiple datasets and definitions. Global Survey of Working Arrangements 2025
Flexible Working by Education, Occupation and Income
Access to hybrid work is uneven across qualifications and earnings. In Great Britain, 41% of workers with a degree or equivalent hybrid worked in January–March 2025, versus 21% below degree level and 4% among workers with no qualifications; these are access patterns, not causal education effects. Office for National Statistics, “Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?”
Income differences were similarly pronounced: 45% of workers earning at least £50,000 hybrid worked, compared with 8% earning under £20,000. The income bands were self-reported survey categories.
| Great Britain occupation | £50,000 or more | Under £20,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Managers and senior officials | 56% | 26% |
| Professionals | 46% | 20% |
| Associate professionals | 44% | 23% |
| Administrative and secretarial workers | 60% | 14% |
These occupation and income comparisons are observational cross-tabulations from the ONS January–March 2025 survey. Office for National Statistics, “Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?”
U.S. education patterns point in the same descriptive direction. In Q1 2024, telework reached 43.6% for workers aged 25 and over with advanced degrees and 38.4% for bachelor’s-only workers, compared with 18.3% for those with some college or an associate degree, 8.5% for high-school graduates and 3.5% for workers without high-school completion. BLS, “Telework trends”
Flexible Working by Age, Sex, Disability and Employment Status
Great Britain’s January–March 2025 hybrid-working rate was highest among workers aged 30–49 at 36%, compared with 19% for ages 16–29 and 24% for ages 50–69. Employees recorded 30%, compared with 24% for self-employed workers, while full-time workers recorded 34% versus 18% for part-time workers. Office for National Statistics, “Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?”
- In Great Britain, 24% of disabled workers hybrid worked, compared with 29% of non-disabled workers. Disability was survey-defined, and the measure does not directly test employer policy availability.
- Among Great Britain managers and senior officials, 30% of disabled workers hybrid worked, compared with 48% of non-disabled workers in that occupation. Small subgroup comparisons may have wider uncertainty.
- In England, 32% of workers in the least deprived areas hybrid worked, compared with 24% in the most deprived areas. The comparison uses English IMD quintiles, not household income.
The ONS source for these comparisons is “Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?”.
The U.S. Q1 2024 CPS results show smaller sex differences but large differences across race and ethnicity groups. Telework was 24.9% for women and 21.1% for men; it was 32.8% for Asian workers, 23.2% for White workers, 17.1% for Black workers and 12.4% for Hispanic workers. BLS, “Telework trends”
| U.S. worker group, Q1 2024 | Telework rate |
|---|---|
| Workers with a disability | 24.4% |
| Workers without a disability | 22.8% |
| Ages 16–24 | 7.9% |
| Ages 25–54 | 25.1% |
| Ages 55 and over | 24.4% |
These are CPS reference-week estimates, and disability status and age bands follow BLS survey classifications. BLS, “Telework trends”
Work-from-Home Frequency and Global Flexible Working Trends
Telework participation does not reveal how much of a person’s job is done at home. Among U.S. teleworkers in Q1 2024, 52.1% teleworked some hours and 47.9% teleworked all hours; the all-hours share fell from 54.0% in Q1 2023. BLS, “Telework trends”
Occupation remains a major dividing line. In Q1 2024, U.S. telework rates were 37.9% in management, professional and related occupations, 24.9% in sales and office occupations, 5.4% in service occupations, and 3.2% in both production/transportation/material-moving and natural-resources/construction/maintenance occupations; the differences are descriptive and reflect the feasibility of physical work. BLS, “Telework trends”
The Global Survey of Working Arrangements provides a different frequency measure for full-time, college-educated workers. Across 23 countries observed in all three waves, average full paid days worked from home fell from about 1.55 per week in 2022 to 1.29 in 2023 and 1.23 in late 2024 or early 2025.
| G-SWA measure | Average WFH days per week |
|---|---|
| 2022 | About 1.55 |
| 2023 | 1.29 |
| Late 2024/early 2025 | 1.23 |
The late-2024/early-2025 global average is approximately 25% of workdays at home, an interpretation of the weekly average. The balanced panel covers 23 countries, while Wave 4 covered 16,422 full-time, college-educated workers across 40 countries from November 2024 to February 2025; it is not an estimate for all workers worldwide. Global Survey of Working Arrangements 2025
The decline was 0.26 days per week from 2022 to 2023 and only 0.06 days from 2023 to late 2024 or early 2025, calculated from rounded published averages. College-educated employees in English-speaking countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland typically reported about 1.5–1.9 WFH days per week in Wave 4, a range rather than one pooled estimate. Global Survey of Working Arrangements 2025
Flexible Schedules, Notice and Time-Off Access
Location flexibility and schedule flexibility are not identical. In the BLS 2024–25 average for U.S. wage and salary workers, 57% had schedules allowing them to vary start and end times.
- Among workers with flexible schedules, 36% could change them frequently, 45% occasionally and 19% rarely.
- 69% said taking an hour or two off during work hours was not difficult, while 20% said it was somewhat difficult and 11% very difficult.
- 59% knew their work schedule at least four weeks in advance, while 9% knew it one day or less in advance.
Source: BLS, “Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules Summary – 2025 A01 Results”. These measures concern the main job, and perceived difficulty is not observed leave usage.
Homeworking access was associated with greater reported schedule control. Among U.S. workers who could work at home, 78% had flexible start and stop times, compared with 44% of those who could not; 86% of those who could work at home said taking an hour or two off was not difficult, compared with 59% of those who could not.
These are observational comparisons and do not establish that homeworking causes flexibility. BLS, “Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules Summary – 2025 A01 Results”
Schedule predictability also differed by education and sex. Men were twice as likely as women to learn their schedule one day or less in advance, at 12% versus 6%; among workers aged 25 and over, the figure was 19% for those without a high-school diploma versus 7% for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. BLS, “Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules Summary – 2025 A01 Results”
Thirty-six percent of U.S. wage and salary workers had no flexible schedule and an employer-decided schedule. Within that group, 70% knew the schedule four weeks or more ahead and 7% knew it one day or less ahead; the latter figures are conditional on this schedule arrangement. BLS, “Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules Summary – 2025 A01 Results”
Flexible Working Outcomes: Trust, Retention and Employee Experience
The OECD/LiveTiles evidence comes from an online survey conducted in 2022 and reported in a 2023 brief. It describes associations among respondents, not causal effects.
- Among teleworkers consulted about teleworking, 79% were satisfied with work-life balance, compared with 62% of those not consulted.
- Workplace trust was reported by 89% of consulted teleworkers, compared with 59% of those not consulted.
- Among teleworkers with a right to disconnect, 86% reported workplace trust, compared with 67% without such a right.
Source: OECD, “Teleworking, workplace policies and trust”.
Trust also varied with teleworking status. Sixty-seven percent of full-time teleworkers and 55% of hybrid workers said teleworking fosters workplace trust, compared with 34% of people who never or very rarely teleworked; about 50% of full-time teleworkers and 37% of hybrid workers reported a great deal of trust in their firm, compared with 27% of those who never or rarely teleworked.
Hybrid workers were defined as employees teleworking at least several times a month. OECD, “Teleworking, workplace policies and trust”
Retention intent was also connected with current access. In the same survey, 82% of employees currently teleworking said they would switch jobs to keep teleworking if their employer stopped allowing it, compared with 61% of employees not currently teleworking; this is stated willingness, not observed turnover. OECD, “Teleworking, workplace policies and trust”
Policy awareness was incomplete among hybrid workers: 19% said they did not have a right to disconnect and another 31% did not know whether they had one. “Do not know” is not equivalent to having no policy. OECD, “Teleworking, workplace policies and trust”