The percentage of Canadian workers who spent most of their working hours at home decreased significantly between the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and last November, according to Statistics Canada.
The federal agency specifies in a press release released Thursday that this percentage fell from around 40% in April 2020 to 20% two months ago.
As a comparison to a pre-pandemic period, Statistics Canada reports that approximately 7% of Canadians worked most of their hours from home in May 2016.
The Statistics Canada press release notes that the increase in teleworking may have had significant impacts on many aspects of the economy and society in Canada. The agency cites for example the housing market, rental of office space and economic activity in city centers, productivity, wage growth, worker turnover, work-family balance, child care children, public transportation and greenhouse gas emissions.
Moreover, the press release states that the increase in teleworking has led to a decline in the use of public transport, putting financial pressure on urban transport networks. While the use of teleworking increased from around 7% in January 2020, just before the outbreak of the pandemic, to around 40% in April 2020 and decrees ordering people to stay at home were adopted, the number of trips passengers in urban transport networks decreased from 163.9 million to 25.7 million during the same period.
The federal agency adds that the increase in working from home may also have reduced the use of public transit indirectly by leading to a reduction in travel time and road traffic, which incentivized some people not working from home to abandon public transport to travel by car.
On the other hand, the increase in working from home has likely reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, a major source of pollution in Canada. A recent Statistics Canada study estimated that if all Canadians whose work could be done from home in 2015 and who worked on-site that year had started working exclusively from home, greenhouse gas emissions greenhouse emissions from transportation could have decreased by 9.5 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. This represents 12% of direct household greenhouse gas emissions attributable to transportation in 2015.
The agency adds that since not all Canadians are currently working exclusively from home, the reduction in direct greenhouse gas emissions from household transportation is likely less than 12% on an annual basis.