After the corona pandemic subsided, the proportion of unused office jobs tripled. That was the result of an ifo survey. However, the differences in the various sectors are very large.
According to a survey by the Munich ifo Institute, three times as many jobs are unused on an average day than before the corona pandemic. The average share is currently 12.3 percent. Before the pandemic, this proportion was only 4.6 percent. The reason is the increased proportion of employees who work from home.
“Around a quarter of employees regularly work from home,” emphasizes ifo expert Simon Krause. Some companies converted empty offices into co-working spaces for more personal exchange on the attendance days. Other companies reduced their space requirements in order to save costs for the unused offices.
Consequences for real estate market and retail
This trend could have consequences for the real estate market, which is already under pressure due to increased interest rates and construction costs. In addition, the decline in office use is hitting inner cities particularly hard. “There are an above-average number of offices there, and the shops there are also suffering from lower retail sales because of home office,” said ifo researcher Krause.
location from industry to industry differing
However, the average figures hide large differences. In the service sector, for example, the share has increased from 6.2 to 16.8 percent since 2019. In manufacturing it increased from 3.1 to currently 9.6 percent. In retail, the increase is limited from 3.2 to 5.8 percent, as is the case in construction from 1.7 to 2.5 percent.
A particularly large number of empty offices can be found in the information technology, advertising and market research, management consulting and pharmaceutical industries.