Italy Usually Works from Home Rate (2025)

The Italy Usually Works from Home Rate measures the share of employed persons for whom home is their primary work location, compiled annually by Eurostat from the EU Labour Force Survey (dataset LFSA_EHOMP, frequency code USU). The 2025 figure of 2.7% is remarkable in the European context: Italy is the only major EU economy to have seen its usually-from-home rate fall below its pre-COVID level (3.7% in 2019), a -1.1pp year-on-year decline that indicates a still-accelerating return to in-person work.

Italy's pandemic WFH peak of 12.3% in 2020 was driven by emergency decree requirements (DPCM) mandating remote work for all eligible roles, with compliance enforced by health and safety regulations rather than negotiated employer-employee agreements. When mandates were lifted and then eventually phased out, Italian firms — lacking the formal co-determination mechanisms of German Works Councils or the embedded télétravail agreements of French companies — were largely free to restore pre-pandemic attendance norms. Large Italian public sector employers (state enterprises, banks, and ministries together represent a substantial share of white-collar employment) have been particularly assertive in requiring physical presence. The absence of a durable legislative framework for smart working, combined with Italian managerial culture emphasising physical visibility, has accelerated the reversal. By 2025, Italy's WFH rate has not merely partially normalised — it has fallen below the pre-pandemic baseline, an outcome not seen in Germany, France, or Spain.

For commercial real estate investors, Italy's trajectory is the most favourable among the major EU economies studied here. Milan's Grade A office market — particularly around Porta Nuova, City Life, and the QC (Quadrilatero della Conversazione) financial district — has seen vacancy rates decline as demand from financial services, professional services, and tech tenants has held firm while supply additions have been limited. Rome's office market is more complex, driven heavily by public sector demand that is politically constrained. For occupiers assessing Italian footprint, the data supports maintaining or incrementally expanding space rather than the aggressive portfolio optimisation that multinational firms have applied to German and French operations.

Coverage and methodology: Eurostat compiles the usually-from-home rate annually from EU LFS microdata. Italy's ISTAT provides the underlying survey data. The 2020 LFS methodology update standardised home-working questions across member states. The sharp 2025 decline to 2.7% — below the 2019 level — has been verified in ISTAT's Labour Force Survey publications and is not considered a methodological artefact. Cross-country comparisons are valid in direction; Italy's anomalously low rate relative to the EU-27 average is confirmed by multiple national and Eurofound survey sources.