IF THERE’S one thing that is a takeaway from the lockdown stages of the covid pandemic, it’s people want to work from home – especially in Reading.
A new survey sought out where in the country people have been looking to swap the smart suits for PJs and slippers.
And the hi-tech Thames Valley town is in the top 10.
It turns out that Walsall is the top area in the UK where Brits are on the lookout for remote work, with 2,160 monthly searches per 100,000 of the population.
Blackburn comes in second place, with 1,000 people searching for remote work every month, per 100,000 people.
Norwich is third most interested in working from home.
Reading comes in ninth, with 785 online searches about home working per 100,000 of the population.
The research was conducted by the team at Financial-World, who analysed Google keyword search volume data for interest in remote work for each major town and city in the UK.
Search terms relating to remote work such as ‘work from home jobs’ and ‘remote jobs’ were summed, divided by the population of the area, and multiplied by 100,000 to give the search results per 100,000 of the population.
These results were then ranked to discover the top 10.
Helping drive the trend is, no doubt, ongoing industrial action over trains, where staff are pushing for improved working conditions and pay.
Financial-World says with newly announced rail strike action coming up this Easter – including today, Saturday, March 18, and Thursday, March 30 – there is a renewed interest in remote working.
A spokesperson from Financial-World said: “There is a clear demand for remote roles in the UK. The costs of commuting and the time spent doing so is proving to be a strain on many people’s finances and a stressful situation to navigate among train strike actions and the cost-of-living crisis.
“This is evident by the fact that every city or town featured in the top ten of this study is due to be affected by train strikes.
“It will be interesting to see if more employers consider welcoming more flexible work-from-home schemes or hybrid workers to keep up with the demand and avoid losing employees in the future.”
