German home working holds flat at 24.9% as ifo finds no return-to-office wave in company data

The ifo Institute’s August 2026 business survey puts home working at 24.9% across the German economy, with wide variation by sector: 35.1% in services, 17.7% in wholesale, 16.4% in industry, 6.2% in retail and 5.1% in construction. The 30-point spread between services and construction is the widest in the series.

The finding that carries most weight is the absence of movement. ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour states that “for years we have seen no significant changes in the home-office share — neither overall nor by sector.” The survey asks companies what they do, rather than what they announce.

Why this matters

If you are job-hunting in Germany and reading a run of return-to-office headlines, this is the number that tells you what employers are actually doing. Roughly one in four German workers does some work from home, one in three in services, and that has not shifted materially in years. A single employer’s mandate is a fact about that employer, not evidence of a national direction of travel — and the aggregate data gives you grounds to keep asking for remote or hybrid arrangements rather than assuming the market has turned against them.

The sector spread is the more useful planning tool. At 35.1%, services is where remote and hybrid arrangements are normal enough that asking for one is unremarkable. At 5.1% in construction and 6.2% in retail, the constraint is the work itself rather than employer attitude, and a search aimed at those sectors will hit a real floor no amount of negotiation moves.

Context

The German figure sits below the 55% of Brussels workers who now do some work from home, though the two are measured differently — ifo surveys companies, while the Brussels figure comes from a labour force survey of individuals. Both point the same way: the practice settled after the pandemic and has stayed settled, whatever individual employers announce.