Almost 900,000 people worked from home in the September quarter, according to the latest employment data from Statistics New Zealand.

Using a Household Labor Force SurveyStats NZ collected data on where people work in their main place of work from the June 2020 quarter.

The latest survey found that 898,700 people worked from home for some or all of the time in the week before they were surveyed for the September 2024 quarter.

Stas NZ said this figure was 33.2% of employed persons who worked that week and included 240,000 remote workers who worked exclusively from home and 651,800 hybrid workers who worked both from home and from another location.

According to Stats NZ, 2.4 million people worked outside the home in that reference week.

This included both hybrid workers and 1.8 million who worked only outside the home, while 208,500 employees were away from their main workplace.

Statistics NZ Business Operations Survey which was published in March earlier this year showed the top three industries with staff working from home on any given working day:

• Information and telecommunications where 27% of staff worked from home
• Financial and insurance services where 20% of staff worked from home
• Professional, scientific and technical services where 20% of staff worked from home

1 in 6

In October, Stats NZ released population, housing and housing data from the 2023 census, revealing that about 1 in 6 workers in New Zealand he worked from home.

According to the 2023 Census, the number of people working mostly from home increased by nearly 60% between 2018 and 2023.

In 2023, people who worked mostly from home represented 17.7% of the employee census, or 464,130 people.

This is compared to 11.9%, or 291,234 people, who worked mostly from home in 2018.

Stats NZ said the Wellington and Auckland regions saw the biggest increase in the number of people working mostly from home since 2018, with the number in both regions more than doubling.

“In 2023, 158,658 people worked mostly from home in the Auckland region, up from 72,099 people in 2018, while Wellington went from 24,909 to 56,016 people,” Stats NZ said.

Public Services Minister Nicola Willis is want flexible working not to be the default option for civil servants and told government department heads in September to bring more staff back to the office five days a week.