10% increase in office employees in Germany over the past decade

With the world busy speculating whether we will all ever return to our offices instead of working from home (WFH), a new study on the history and trends in office working produced by the Cologne-based IW Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft is timely. The study looks at office employment in the bigger German cities, urban migration and price development over the last few decades.

It examines the possible establishment of new forms of work and whether a real trend reversal is under way, and what effect this will have on pricing – assuming cities are unable to increase their attractiveness to office workers by providing whole new options for worker mobility.

The once prospering cities of the Ruhr area or the Manufacturing or Rust Belt in the USA show the impact of evolving megatrends, as highlighted in the study. By contrast, the recent run on modern urban areas seemed to be a self-evident "mega trend" for almost all analysts in recent years, with the high office vacancy rates of the first decade of the 2000s seeing a steady and continuous lowering. 

Now, though, the possible Corona consequences are altering the view of office employment in important ways. Dr. Andrea Hammermann and Professor Michael Voigtländer from the IW have been grappling with potential developments in the sector, although they bemoan the lack of up-to-date and available data on office employment trends. Either earlier regular surveys have been either discontinued or not methodologically adapted, rendering data not always useful, they say.

Still, here’s what we’ve got. According to the new IW study, a total of about 14.8 million people work in Germany in offices. In the period 2012 to 2018, the number of office employees has increased by just under 3 million, while at the same time, the ratio of office employees to other workers has risen from 35.2% to 36.7%. 

Even in the seven largest German metropolises, office employment has increased strongly, with growth rates ranging between 23% in Düsseldorf and 42% in Berlin. Around 46% of office employees subject to social insurance contributions work occasionally or frequently in the home office, while for another 39% at least the potential for home office is nominally available. Since 2006, the proportion of employees who work frequently or occasionally from their home office rose by around 9 percentage points. 

The researchers are still digging, but the potential for large amounts of office workers to cut down on their daily commute seems considerable, to put it mildly…