On June 5, Statistics Canada released new data from the 2022 Time Use Survey, including a new study on how telework is linked to time use and well-being. The 2022 Time Use Survey, for which data were collected from July 2022 to July 2023, is the seventh iteration of the survey since its inception in 1986. This also marks the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began that data have been collected on how people spend time in their daily lives.
The pandemic led to a major shift in working arrangements, especially a rapid rise in working from home. The percentage of Canadians working most of their hours from home rose from 7% in May 2016 to 24% in July 2022, then dropped to 21% in July 2023. Since the start of the pandemic, Statistics Canada has published a wide variety of data and research on teleworking. However, this release is the agency's first study on both teleworking and time use since the pandemic's onset, and the first in over 10 years.
The new study uses data from the survey's time diary to compare three groups of employees (not self-employed). Those are: work-from-home (WFH) teleworkers, who worked at home on the reference day (i.e., diary day); on-site teleworkers, who teleworked in the week prior to the diary day but worked on-site on that day; and non-teleworkers, who did not telework in the week prior to the diary day and worked on-site on that day. The study discusses the differences in time use and well-being that remain between these groups after accounting for socioeconomic characteristics such as gender, age, the type of job, or usual work hours.
