Telework Trends in Europe: Who are Up-and-Coming, Leaders, Losing Ground or Laggards?

Telework in Europe has seen a significant surge, especially due to technological advancements and the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper focuses on the incidence and changes in telework in European countries before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and proposes a classification of European countries in terms of share of teleworkers and the rate of increase in teleworking. This classification provides insights into the varying stages of teleworking adoption across different European countries and can be used by practitioners, researchers and policy makers. Furthermore, we focus on Greece as a critical example of digital underachievement. The study uses data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and covers the European Union countries, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The paper shows that the pandemic significantly boosted remote work across Europe. However, the disparity in remote work adoption between regions within Europe remains significant displaying a divide between North-Western and South-Eastern Europe regarding remote work adoption.