The rapid shift to remote work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic brought lasting changes to how, where and when many Australians work. What began as an emergency response in 2020 has, in many sectors, evolved into a long-term reconfiguration of work patterns. Since then, the ability to work from home has become a feature of many Australians’ lives.
For the 2025 ADII, we introduced new questions to track the nature and extent of remote working in Australia. People were asked whether they used the internet to do paid work from home during normal work hours instead of working onsite and how often.
Who is working from home?
A significant proportion of the population are using the internet to do some work from home on a regular basis. We found that over half (53.7%) of Australian adults reported using the internet to do some amount of paid work from home at least weekly and over a third (35.2%) work from home every workday.
As with other aspects of digital transformation, the move to remote work has not been experienced equally. While some workers have gained flexibility and autonomy, others remain excluded, either because their roles cannot be performed remotely (such as frontline workers) or because their digital access, household circumstances or employment conditions make working from home difficult or impossible.
These differences are patterned by geography, gender, income and job type. Roles in professional and knowledge-based industries are more likely to have jobs that can be undertaken remotely than those in casual or manual employment. Workers in major cities are more likely to have remote options than those in regional or remote areas [1].
This occupational divide is borne out in the 2025 ADII data. 68.4% of managers and professionals and 45.3% of clerical/administrative workers are working from home at least weekly (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Used the internet to do paid work from home during normal work hours instead of working onsite at least weekly, by occupation type (Source: Australian Internet Usage Survey, 2024).
The ability to work from home is important for both men and women. 39.1% of males use the internet to do some work from home every workday and 57.1% work from home weekly. 31.6% of females do some work from home each workday and 50.7% work from home at least weekly.
The shift to remote work has also been geographically uneven. In capital cities, 56.4% work from home at least weekly, compared to 47.4% in the rest of Australia. The geographic pattern of the data highlights how remote work is more common in metropolitan labour markets with high concentrations of professional roles and better connectivity.
Despite different experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings indicate that many across Australian cities and regions are using the internet to do some paid work from home (see Figure 2). In Melbourne, which had the longest lockdown periods, 64.6% use the internet to do some work from home at least once a week. Most workers in state capitals Sydney (57.5%), Brisbane (57.1%) and Hobart (56%) are doing some of their work from home at least weekly. While still sizeable, rates are lower in Darwin (46.5%), Perth (44.9%), Adelaide (44.5%) and Canberra (41.1%) (see Figure 2).
Used the internet to do paid work from home during normal work hours instead of working onsite: at least weekly
Figure 2: Map of geographic distribution of WFH patterns.
Meanwhile, 15.9% of Australians report that their use is “always” or “often” impacted by connectivity issues or network interruptions, with higher rates in regional and remote Australia. These findings point to a new kind of unevenness: not only do opportunities for remote work vary across jobs and sectors, but the practical ability to sustain remote work depends on the quality, reliability and affordability of household connectivity and devices.
What are the implications of the uneven shift to remote work?
Remote work has quickly become a major feature of Australia’s labour market, but its benefits are uneven. The shift is shaped by what kind of job you have, where you live, your workplace policies and culture and whether your household has the connectivity, devices, spaces and skills to support it. The ADII’s new remote work question provides a baseline for tracking these shifts over time and for identifying those who could potentially work from home but face difficulties with accessing good quality networks, the costs of devices or data or lack the requisite skills and literacies to navigate digital technologies without on-site assistance.
References and footnotes
[1] Ulubasoglu, M., & Onder, Y. K. (2020, June 29). Teleworkability in Australia: 41% of full-time and 35% of part-time jobs can be done from home. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/teleworkability-in-australia-41-of-full-time-and-35-of-part-time-jobs-can-be-done-from-home-140723
