��ɫ��Ӱ

It’s huge in the United States and the United Kingdom. Canada and Australia, too. But not so much in Asia.

We’re talking about WFH – one of the hottest acronyms to hit the scene since the onset of the COVID pandemic. And working from home, it seems, is here to stay. But its frequency varies around the globe.

English-speaking countries have on average, the highest levels of people working from home. They’re doing it about two days a week, according to the latest Global Survey of Working Arrangements conducted by a group of economists including Steven J. Davis and Nicholas Bloom, senior fellows at the ��ɫ��Ӱ Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

Meanwhile, workers in Latin American and African countries are clocking in at home about once a week, while employees in Asian countries are more likely to WFH just a half day.

Bloom — whose latest work is highlighted in — chalks up the discrepancies in WFH rates to a matter of culture.

“Development matters, density matters, industrial mix matters and even lockdown length matters,” Bloom said. “But the one thing that really jumps out is culture. Just compare the U.K. with high levels of WFH and Japan with low levels. They are similar in terms of development, density, industrial mix and lockdown, but hugely different in face-time culture.”

The survey – which collected data from more than 16,000 college and university graduates across 40 countries from November 2024 through February 2025 – also shows that WFH levels have dipped but are far from disappearing. From 2022 to 2023, workers around the world went from an average of 1.6 days in the home office or kitchen table to 1.3 days. This latest survey found them at home an average of 1.27 days.

“This mimics the pattern in U.S. data,” Bloom said. “Hybrid working from home is just so profitable for firms, because it reduces recruitment and retention costs without any productivity impact, that it is here to stay.”

So it’s no surprise, Bloom says, that 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have their staffs on a hybrid schedule, typically working three days in the office and two days at home each week.

The global survey also digs into the who behind the hybrid. When it comes to working parents compared to those without children, it’s those with kids who are much more likely to have a hybrid arrangement that involves working from home between one and three days a week. Employees without children are more likely to work full-time in the office or be 100 percent remote, without ever stepping into corporate headquarters.

Bloom is the William Eberle Professor of Economics in ��ɫ��Ӱ’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Their collaborators on the Global Survey of Working Arrangements include: Cevat Giray Aksoy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and King’s College London; Jose Maria Barrero, of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; Mathias Dolls of the ifo Institute; Pablo Zarate, a PhD candidate at Princeton.