New research from Roy Morgan reveals that over 6.7 million Australians, representing 46% of employed Australians, work from home at least some of the time paid or unpaid. The remaining 54% work entirely in-person.
A slim majority of full-time employees (51%) ‘work from home’ at least some of the time compared to just over a third of part-time employees (36%).
A majority of workers in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra ‘work from home’
Australians living in capital cities are more likely to ‘work from home’ than those who live in regional areas. A majority of workers from Australia’s largest cities of Sydney (55%) and Melbourne (52%) ‘work from home’, as do a bare majority of 51% in the nation’s capital in Canberra/ACT.
‘Working from home’ rates are lower in the smaller capital cities led by Hobart (45%) and Adelaide (44%) and followed by Brisbane (43%) and Perth (40%).
In contrast, regional areas show lower adoption of working from home, 40% in regional Queensland, 39% in Regional NSW, 37% in regional Victoria, 36% in regional Tasmania, 34% in Darwin/Alice Springs (NT), 33% in regional South Australia, and 31% in regional Western Australia report working from home.
City Workers by ‘Work From Home’ for Capital City CBDs
There is a strong correlation between ‘working from home’ and workplace size.
Solo workers, or the self-employed, lead the way with the highest ‘working from home’ rate at 55%, underscoring the autonomy and adaptability that comes with independent work.
Small workplaces with 2 to 4 employees also show a relatively high ‘work-from-home’ rate of 48%, but this figure drops 10% points to 38% for workplaces with both 5 to 9 employees and 10 to 24 employees, likely reflecting the more hands-on, client-facing, or operational nature of roles in these smaller businesses.
As organisations grow in workforce size, flexible working arrangements increase incrementally. Workplaces with 25 to 49 employees have 42% ‘working from home’, those with 50 to 99 employees have 44% ‘working from home’, and those with 100 to 299 employees have 45% ‘working from home’.
Notably, once workplaces reach 300+ employees the ‘work from home’ rate is at, or near, a majority of the workforce. For workplaces with 300 to 499 employees, the ‘work-from-home’ rate is 49%, increasing to 51% for workplaces of 500 to 999 employees and 52% for large workplaces with 1,000 or more employees.
This pattern highlights a tipping point where larger organisations possess the resources and culture necessary to support ‘working from home’ on a broader scale. The data also indicates that while the smallest workplaces (solo workers) enjoy the greatest individual flexibility, it is the largest workplaces that lead majority working from work adoption, demonstrating that workplace size drives working from home in fundamentally different ways.