Companies are increasingly allowing new employees to work mobile.

The proportion of online job postings with an option to work from home more than tripled to twelve percent between 2019 and 2021.

This is the result of a joint study by the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) together with the Ifo Institute, as the economic institute announced on Friday in Munich.

"The increase in the home office option in job advertisements is evident across all economic sectors," said Ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour. "The increase was strongest in occupations in which the unused home office potential was particularly high before the crisis," said Alipour. This applies to specialists in IT and communication technology as well as to business economists in financial and insurance services.

Rural regions are also catching up with home offices.

The regional inequality between urban and rural areas fell by around 30 percent between 2019 and 2020.

Companies that enable home office also looked more often for employees with digital skills, as well as with the ability to work in a team and adapt.

"By moving the job home, well-rehearsed processes are no longer necessary, both in the social context and in the organization of work itself," explained KU researcher Christina Langer.

Adaptability is required

"Our results clearly show that companies are increasingly aligning their work organization with the home office," said Langer. Basic computer skills are required almost twice as often in job advertisements with the option to work from home (43 percent) than in job advertisements that do not mention home office (22 percent). Competencies such as the ability to adapt to change (79 percent compared with 66 percent) and the ability to work in a team are also gaining importance in the home office.

According to the announcement, the study is based on over 35 million job postings in the period from January 2014 to March 2021. For this purpose, the websites of over 200 companies and all relevant online job exchanges in Germany were searched for job postings. The data was collected by the American company Emsi Burning Glass, which specializes in labor market analyzes.