Germany's Capacities to Work from Home

Alipour, Jean-Victor; Falck, Oliver; Schüller, Simone

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Germany's Capacities to Work from Home

IZA Discussion Paper No. 13152

19 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020 Last revised: 6 May 2025

See all articles by Jean-Victor Alipour

Oliver Falck

- Department Human Capital and Innovation

Simone Schüller

- Ifo Institute; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); FBK-IRVAPP

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Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the related "social distancing" measures, working from home (WfH) has suddenly become a crucial lever of economic activity. This paper combines survey and administrative data to compute measures for the feasibility of working from home among German employees. Breaking down the data by occupation, region, industry, and employee characteristics, we document considerable variation in the potential to WfH across all dimensions. We find that WfH is feasible for roughly 56 percent of the overall German workforce, while less than half of this potential was exploited in the pre-pandemic economy.

Keywords: Germany, working from home, COVID-19

JEL Classification: D24, J22, J24, O33, R12

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Alipour, Jean-Victor and Falck, Oliver and Schüller, Simone, Germany's Capacities to Work from Home. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13152, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3579244