Home office: Companies are less likely to advertise jobs with the option to work from home

Three days a week in the office: This should be the standard again at Deutsche Bahn in the future. As SPIEGEL reported, the state-owned company is significantly reducing its home office option despite internal resistance. At Mercedes-Benz, from 2027 onwards, there will be a compulsory attendance requirement of four days per week. Companies such as Deutsche Bank and SAP had already tightened their requirements a few months ago.

Working from home became popular during the corona pandemic. The gradual departure from working from home is now also evident in new job advertisements. This is the result of an evaluation by the job portal Indeed, which was available to SPIEGEL before publication.

Accordingly, the proportion of tenders with the option of remote or hybrid work fell to 13.9 percent in Germany in the third quarter - the lowest value since January 2022. The rate reached its peak in April 2023 at 16.8 percent. It then remained largely constant for around two and a half years. Since the beginning of this year, the proportion of jobs with a home office option has not increased in any month.

“After years of stagnation, the economy is under great pressure to transform,” says Indeed economist Virginia Sondergeld. “Many companies are increasingly seeing home office as an obstacle.” At the same time, given the economic situation, employers have to compete less for applicants. “Both together ensure that the presence debate is now also visible in the job market.”

According to the analysis, part of the trend can be explained by the structure of the job market: jobs that are suitable for working from home have performed worse overall in recent years than those that require physical presence - such as nursing or retail.

Sharpest decline in the financial sector

But office jobs where work from home would be possible were also less likely to be offered this option. Overall, the decline compared to the previous quarter was 1.6 percentage points. It was strongest for jobs in banking and finance (-4.1), followed by data & analytics (-2.6), human resources (-2.1) and marketing (-2.0).

“It remains to be seen whether more presence will bring companies the efficiency gains they hope for and put them back on a sustainable growth path,” says Sondergeld. There is much to suggest that working together in the office strengthens cohesion and creates space for creative discussions. »But new products and business models are not created simply through presence.«