Remote and Hybrid Working Statistics 2026

Wed 22 Jul 2026

Angela Tracey-Brown

Product Manager - CMI & CIPD

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For lots of people in the UK, remote and hybrid working are now a normal part of life.

If you have or are aiming for a career in HR, it's important to understand how work is changing.

At MOL, our CIPD-accredited courses touch on things like remote working, flexible policies and how to support people in today's workplace.

In this blog, we've pulled together the most up-to-date stats from the UK and around the world to show how work has changed, updated for 2026.

If you're managing a team, thinking about flexible working, looking for a career switch or just want the facts, you'll find all the key numbers here. Let's start!

Remote work statistics in the UK

The working-from-home boom that began during the pandemic shows no signs of slowing. It's now a permanent feature of modern work.

In 2019, only 4.7% of UK employees usually worked from home.
By April 2020, that jumped to 46.6% during COVID-19 lockdowns.
In 2025, a Forbes Advisor poll of 1,100 UK respondents found that 63% worked remotely either all or some of the time, a broader measure than ONS's specific hybrid-working figure below.

UK hybrid vs remote workforce statistics

As of March 2026, UK workers split into three clear groups:

28% follow a hybrid model which mixes home and office days.
13% are fully remote, working entirely from home.
43% work exclusively from the office.

COVID-19 remote work statistics

The COVID-19 pandemic was a clear turning point that drove many of today's working habits and styles:

Homeworking spiked from 5.7% pre-pandemic to 43.1% during the first lockdown.
By mid-2020, over 35% of workers worked from home full-time.

Global remote work statistics

The shift towards working from home in the UK is part of a much bigger worldwide move to more flexible ways of working:

In 2020, 12.3% of EU employees usually worked from home, with Finland leading at 25.1%.
By 2024, the EU average had settled at 8.9% usually working from home, according to Eurostat's continuously updated Labour Force Survey data.
Employees working from home do so for an average of around 1.3 days a week across the countries surveyed.

UK hybrid working statistics

Hybrid working is now a lot more common across the UK, but not everyone has the option to choose this setup.

28% of adults in Great Britain worked in a hybrid arrangement between January and March 2025.
35% of parents use hybrid working, broken down into 41% of fathers and 30% of mothers.
People with degrees are about 10 times more likely to work hybrid than those without a degree.
45% of people who earn over £50,000 a year work hybrid, compared with just 8% of people earning under £20,000.

This picture is confirmed by ONS's newer Who has access to hybrid working, Great Britain (June 2025) release, which reports the same 28% headline hybrid figure and the same income-band pattern, £50k-plus earners at 45% hybrid against 8% for those earning under £20,000, alongside a fuller breakdown by education level. ONS updates the underlying working arrangements dataset monthly, so the trend can be tracked as it develops through 2026.

What these stats tell us about remote and hybrid working

These stats show how work has changed in recent years, especially since the pandemic.

HR teams and managers need to understand these trends to support staff and shape fair, flexible working policies.

If you work in HR, or want to, staying up to date with how people work is important. That's where our HR courses can help!

Our CIPD courses in Human Resources and Learning & Development give you the knowledge and skills to manage change, support your team, and build better workplaces, no matter what your set-up looks like.

Want to learn more? Get in touch with us today to chat about your options and find the best course for you!