Gareth Kiernan: Infometrics economist on the remote work statistics and trends for 2024

The popularity of working remotely has continued to surge among Kiwi employees - prompting some new directions from the Government.

Prime Minister Chris Luxon has ordered Wellington-based Government departments to call their staff back into the office to boost performance and keep local businesses going.

Infometrics economist Gareth Kiernan unpacks the latest stats - and wonders if the Government's new terms will make a difference.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now working from home right has been the talk, big
talking point of the week so far. What we don't
have is a lot of numbers, so we thought we'd
crunch a few of them just to get a bit
of context into this debate. And Gareth Kernan is Informetric's
chief forecasters, who's been a forecaster, who's been doing the
numbers for us at Gareth evening here, mate, do we
have any idea how many people are actually working from home?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Stat Sens did a survey last year and showed that
about forty three percent of people have the option to
work from home, and some other numbers suggest that around
about eighty percent of those people have worked from home
in the last three months or so, not saying they
work from home every week, but at least utilizing that
option to some extent. It's interesting when you look at

(00:42):
professional services, which you know, the talk has been about
the government this week, and it's probably the closest industry
we've got sort of lining up with the sort of
work there. Eighty one percent of people are able to
work from home, so it is massively prevalent, as you'd expect,
I guess through you know, those sort of office based jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Do you think that sending these guys back is the
proportion of the workforce in Wellington being the civil service
big enough to actually impact Wellington if we sent them
all back five days a week, let's say.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, I mean, look the civil Service, it's about twenty
percent of Wellington's workforce, compared to across the rest of
the country around about five percent. So it is significant.
But I was fascinated looking at the public transport usage
actually on a regional basis, I mean, Wellington's public transport
usage this year to date, it is down about six
percent from where it was in twenty nineteen, back when

(01:33):
the world was all normal. Auckland, I was surprised to
look at Auckland fourteen percent down, and then I remember
that you guys have had massive problems, you know, and
fixing your train lines and all that sort of thing.
But even bus usage in Auckland are still around, sitting
around about seven percent below where it was in twenty nineteen.
So there's sort of a bit of a feeling that
there's other issues at play in Wellington apart from just

(01:54):
the fact that public servants have been working from home.
I mean, there's been a lot of discussion down here,
of course about the sort of freaking infrastructure and the
unattractiveness of the center of town with earthquake damaged buildings
and that type of thing. We haven't had a lot
of population growth here as well at times. And you
overlay all of that, of course, with the actual job
cuts we've seen too the public sector, and I think

(02:14):
there's probably bigger issues at play then simply, you know,
too many people working from home and not spending enough
in the cafes in town.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
The defense that you get from people who don't want
to have to go back to work, the unions or
you know, don't want to have to send the staff
back to work is that there isn't a problem with productivity.
It hasn't decreased. But can we actually say that with confidence.
Is anybody at any of these agencies or private sector
employers actually measuring productivity often enough to know for sure?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think there's been so many sort of conflicting studies
on it, it's really hard to come to any sort
of firm conclusion about the productivity outcomes. And I get
the feeling that it really depends on your organization, It
really depends on the individuals that play as well. You know,
for some people working at home with the lack of
interruptions is fantastic and they do get more done. For
others you kind of feel like, you know, maybe maybe

(02:59):
they'll take and the piece of bit and you know,
a couple of hours work here and a couple of
hours work there.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
So, gare, if you work in Wellington, do you know
any public sector? It got any mates? So we're taking
the mickey a little bit.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
No, my mates are all very very strong work if
I can't believe you to cure some of that, but no,
loant I know heaps, Yeah, no, I mean look for
look from an infimetrics point of view, I mean we've
always had quite a flexible working policy, even pre COVID.
But we're a small organization with you know, twelve thirteen
fourteen people. It's pretty easy to see sort of holes

(03:33):
in people's productivity if they're not pulling their weight. It
is a lot harder in those bigger organizations and obviously
the public sector, I think imagine it's a lot harder
to keep tabs on everybody and that sort of situation.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah too, right, Hey, Gareth, as always really appreciate you
doing the numbers for us and chatting to you. That's
Gareth Cannan.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
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