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New research has revealed that real estate continues to be a sector that backs the right to work from home.
According to data collected by careers platform Seek, job postings for real estate or property services roles that advertised work from home benefits grew significantly since February 2020 – before the pandemic-era shifts that ushered in the practice more broadly. And while this year has brought reports that the practice is beginning to be phased out, in real estate, there was a slight rise in listings advertising work-from-home capabilities between April and October of 2023.
This is broadly in keeping with Australia’s labour market at large, where the WFH rate has fallen slightly in more recent months, but remains much higher than pre-COVID-19 levels.
As Seek’s research revealed, before COVID-19 hit, very few job advertisements indicated that the role could be done from home – just 1.6 per cent in February 2020. The benefit of working outside of the office for even part of the work week was an uncommon feature of jobs prior to the onset of the pandemic.
The WFH rate rose sharply during the initial lockdowns and even continued to increase once restrictions eased. The rate rose from a little over 6 per cent of job ads in late 2021 to a peak of 11 per cent in April 2023. Since then, it has fallen slightly, sitting at 10 per cent in October. This is still substantially above pre-COVID-19 levels, and materially higher than the highest rate recorded during lockdowns.
Though organisational leaders have signalled their intention to get workers back into the office, Seek indicated that the task might be harder than they think, with the trend appearing set to stick around and businesses finding it hard to eliminate a perk that so many others offer.
As Matt Cowgill, Seek’s senior economist explained:
“At 10 per cent, the WFH rate remains above the 9 per cent recorded in May 2022, when the great job boom reached its peak. Since May ’22, labour demand has cooled and the average number of applications per job ad has increased substantially, yet WFH has risen as a share of all job ads. This shows that the ability to work from home at least some of the time was not a perk that employers were only offering during the period of peak labour market tightness.”
“Even as the market is moving to a more normal balance between supply and demand, the proportion of job ads offering the ability to work from home has remained high,” Mr Cowgill added.
Employees who prioritise working from home can take comfort in the job board’s findings. Without a global disruption such as a pandemic, labour trends take a very long time to change, Mr Cowgill said.
“Two years on from the last lockdowns in Australia, work from home is still a feature of our labour market. The proportion of job ads that indicate that a role can be done from home remains dramatically higher than it was in 2019,” he added.
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