Working from home is turning more habitual among national workers and, in the second trimester, 908 thousand Portuguese people were in remote work. The 18.3% of the total employed population in this period – 4979.4 thousand people – an increase of 0.4% in relation to the previous trimester.

“There’s a chance in the way people look at work. In all sectors, in all services, support roles or IT, people want to know if remote work will be included in job proposals. With remote work there aren’t doubts that, with hours of work at home increasing, professionals can achieve higher flexibility and reconcile their professional and personal lives,” Ricardo Carneiro, senior director of recruitment and specialised selection at Multipessoal, told Trabalho by ECO.

Over the trimester, 960 thousand people confirmed having worked from home (19.3% of the employed population). But the INE gives more detail on this slice of the workers. Out of these, 248.6 thousand always work from home (25.9%); 330.1 thousand did so “regularly,” in a system that blends office work and remote (34.4%); another 142.2 thousand worked from home “punctually” (14.8%), while another 232.9 thousand worked from home “outside their timetable” (24.3%).

Against the first trimester, the INE registered an increase of 2.8% among those who blend office and remote work, the so-called hybrid model.

Among those who said they work at home “regularly,” in a system that reconciles remote and presential work, the most common system reserves some remote days every week, covering 228.6 thousand people (69.3%), having been “the system that registered the largest trimestral variation (2.4% above the 1st trimester of 2023),” the body stated. Employees in a hybrid system work three days a week at home on average.

The number of people working in telework – that is, using IT to carry out roles from home, by INE’s definition – also registered a growth of 0.4% to 908 thousand against the previous trimester. Or rather, 18.3% of the total employed population.

“It’s a very high number,” João Cerejeira reacted. “We know there’s been some escape of companies from city centres to cut renting expenses and reduce office space. There’s also an interest here from companies in that way, although the travel time and cost, which lowers, also benefits the worker’s perspective,” the Minho University economist points out. “There’s probably this more hybrid model that’s reflected in the numbers here.”

The Minho University professor also reminded of the phenomenon of “companies moving to Portugal, namely foreign ones” and that “the growth in IT areas has been little in these hybrid models.” “Not just the technologies, but also the private companies that offer back office services, even more so the young people than necessarily the older workers.”

“The profile of a Portuguese teleworker is someone with a higher education, resident in the Lisbon or Porto metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, telework is growing and allowing new work centres like Évora, Castelo Branco, Covilhã and the archipelagos,” Multipessoal’s Ricardo Carneiro explained.

Effectively, of the 908 thousand teleworkers that were registered in the second trimester, 403.7 thousand lived in Greater Lisbon, the largest concentration of this type of workers followed by the North and Centre regions (238.9 thousand, 174.8 thousand). Alentejo (42.5k), Algarve (24.2k), Madeira (15.3k) and Azores (9.4k) is the rest of the order.

Of these 900 thousand, a large majority (678.7k) had a higher education. They’re mostly employed by others (724.3k) with termless contracts (600.5k), carrying out service work (793.3k), particularly in education (182.6k), IT (135.1k), and consulting (115.1k). There are slightly more women, 461.3k vs 447.6k men.

So, are we witnessing the growth of a new type of employment in the country? “It’s always complicated extrapolating from trimestral variations, but the latest data suggests that telework/hybrid work will continue to grow in the future,” Ricardo Carneiro surmised.