Euro-area employees report high satisfaction with current work-from-home (WFH) arrangements but are largely unwilling to sacrifice pay to secure a hybrid schedule. In the European Central Bank’s Consumer Expectations Survey (CES), analysed by Dias da Silva and Marco Weissler (May 2025), respondents were asked what wage reduction they would accept if their employer banned WFH but offered the option to work from home two or three days per week in exchange.
What workers would (and wouldn’t) trade
Seven in ten workers (70%) said they would not accept any pay cut to work from home. About 13% would accept a 1-5% reduction and 8% would accept 6-10%. Across all respondents, the average pay cut workers would accept for two to three WFH days per week is just 2.6%. Among the subset willing to trade pay, the average acceptable cut jumps to 8.7%, underscoring that WFH is a valuable non-wage benefit for a minority rather than a broad trade-off most are ready to make.
Willingness varies by current WFH pattern
Readiness to trade salary tracks current practice. Employees who already work from home more frequently are more willing to concede pay to keep that arrangement. Fully remote workers would accept, on average, a 4.6% cut; those working from home only one day a week would accept around 1.6%.
Since the pandemic, WFH has become more common in the euro area. Eurostat data show the share of 20-64 year-olds working at least sometimes from home doubled from 11.7% in 2019 to 22.4% in 2024. Within the ECB’s CES sample, WFH was even more prevalent: in May 2024, 33.6% reported working from home at least two days per week, and these patterns remained broadly stable into 2025. Many firms now use non-wage benefits, including telework options, as complements or alternatives to higher pay.
The preferred model is hybrid
In 2025, 55.7% of workers did not work from home at all; 11.9% did so about one day per week; 21.9% two to four days (“hybrid”); and 10.6% five or more days. Comparing actual to desired patterns reveals notable gaps, largest for those currently at one WFH day, followed by those never remote, and then those fully remote. Overall, hybrid is the sweet spot: 84% of hybrid workers say they are satisfied with their setup. Tellingly, 43% of fully remote workers would prefer fewer days away from the office, suggesting some telework is driven by necessity or employer requirements rather than pure preference.
Why it matters
For employers and policymakers, the message is clear: hybrid work is popular, but most employees won’t finance it out of their own pay. Designing balanced, predictable hybrid policies, and treating WFH as a targeted non-wage perk rather than a broad substitute for wages, aligns better with worker preferences reflected in the ECB’s CES.
