Most workers in the European Union have stayed in their home countries and remained on traditional contracts, despite predictions that remote working would fuel a surge in cross-border work, digital nomadism and self-employment, a study by the EU-funded Project WeLaR found.
The study, “Post-COVID Developments in Remote Work, Migrations, and Self-Employment in the EU”, based on data from the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), found that the overall share of remote work in the EU declined to 10.5% in 2022 from 13.6% a year earlier, signalling a shift back to in-office roles. Around the globe, governments and companies are implementing hybrid work, requiring employees to return to the office for at least some of the time. Earlier, a jump in the share of remote work from 5% before 2019 had fuelled expectations of a boom in cross-border working.
“Remote work was expected to open up new job opportunities across borders, but in reality, we haven’t seen a major shift,” says Maciej Albinowski, a researcher at the Institute for Structural Research (IBS) and a co-author of the report. “Workers are still largely employed within their own countries, even if they work from home.”
Within the area of work from home, the study found significant regional disparities. Western and Northern European countries, particularly Ireland and Finland, saw the highest increases in remote work, with nearly a quarter of employees primarily working from home in 2022. In contrast, Southern and Eastern European countries, where employment is more concentrated in in traditionally in-person sectors such as tourism and manufacturing, had far lower adoption rates, with Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania recording just 2-3% of workers in remote roles.
Remote work was also expected to boost cross-border employment, but the study found no significant rise in the number of Europeans working for foreign companies while remaining in their home country. The share of employees doing so grew to 0.13% in 2021 from 0.04% in 2019, but by 2022 the figure was already declining again.
The number of digital nomads – those who work remotely from a country different from their employer’s location – increased noticeably after Covid. While digital nomadism has received widespread attention in the media, their overall share in the domestic workforce has not exceeded 0.2% in any EU country except Luxembourg.
Mediterranean countries including Spain, Greece, and Portugal have introduced attractive tax schemes to draw digital working Europeans, but their overall impact remains mixed. Even though the anticipated large-scale influx has not materialised, many cities like Lisbon and Porto have seen new problems including rising living costs linked by some to the presence of digital nomads.
“There’s been a lot of hype around digital nomads, but the data tells a different story,” says IBS researcher Mateusz Krząkała, a co-author. “Their presence is growing, but they’re still a small fraction of the local workforce.”
Some experts also speculated that remote work would push more employees toward self-employment, as companies might prefer hiring freelancers over full-time staff. However, the research shows that self-employment rates in the EU remained stable at 12.4% between 2019 and 2022, with no major increase linked to the rise of remote work. The authors speculate that remote work opportunities could even improve the relative attractiveness of regular employment contracts.
While countries like Belgium, Ireland, and France saw some growth in self-employment, the report finds no clear evidence that remote work directly contributed to this trend.
The paper is available here.
Maciej Albinowski and Mateusz Krząkała (2024) Post-COVID developments in remote work, migrations, and self-employment in the EU. (Deliverable D4.4). Leuven: WeLaR project 101061388–HORIZON.
