Around 12% had worked from home in the previous week and a little more than a quarter said they had worked from home at some point in the recent past.3 At the peak of lockdown in April, almost half of the workforce was working from home in any given week, either exclusively or partially. Over the summer that fraction began falling as restrictions were loosened, before beginning to rise again gradually following government announcements in September. The fraction of the workforce home-working currently stands at around a third, multiples of its pre-Covid level. Of course, these averages obscure some sharp differences across sectors and occupations. Even before the pandemic, there was a high incidence of home-working in sectors such as information and communication (over 50%), professional and scientific (around 45%) and real estate and finance (about 40%). During lockdown, all of these sectors headed towards a 100% model of home-working. That was not the case, either pre or post-Covid, among a range of other occupations representing between half and two-thirds of the workforce. Many of those were key workers, including in health and social care, dealing with the effects of the pandemic. In this respect, Covid has not only accelerated pre-existing trends towards home-working; it has also widened pre-existing occupational divides between those who can and cannot exercise the option of home-working.4 Surveys of workers and businesses suggest increased home-working is likely to persist, albeit not on the same scale. Around a fifth of businesses say they intend using home-working as a permanent business model.
SPEECH  New challenges in a changing world Speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the Deutsche Börse Annual Reception in Eschborn Eschborn, 23 January 2023  Introduction It is a pleasure to speak with you here in Eschborn, marking the start of the New Year. A new beginning often brings with it new challenges, but it also presents us with plenty of opportunities. And today I would like to touch on both. Looking at today’s global economy, I am reminded of the playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, who once observed: “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” The global economy finds itself at a crucial turning point. Last year, we began to see the emergence of a “new global map” of economic relationships – one in which geopolitics is increasingly influencing the global economy. [1] And that in turn has important implications for Europe, which will define the year ahead. A changing world This map is defined by three interrelated factors: shocks, supply, and security. First, with support for an open global trading order on the wane, we are facing new types of shocks to the global economy. For the past few decades, open trade has supported global growth by allowing countries to “rotate” demand during slumps. [2] But now it could become a source of volatility.