Working from home (WFH) is apparently the new big trend accelerated by the Covid 19 pandemic. To some, WFH will spell the end of the central city office tower (and associated inner city cafes); spur a new round of sub regional centres filled with flexible workplace hubs and see further expansion of the urban footprint as workers freed from the daily commute, search out larger houses and sections on the urban fringe.
Next question: given all that, do we need the Central Rail Link anymore?
But who actually works from home?
As people have noted, you need to sit as a desk with a computer to be able to work from home. But maybe not, perhaps you are an artist who uses paints or an author who still uses a typewriter. Then there are folk like farmers who mostly work at home.
We don't have a great deal of information about who works from home and if that is a full time or just part time arrangement.
Stats NZ suggest, based on a survey in 2018, that ‘more than one-third’ of employees have worked from home in their main job. Turns out the ‘more than a third' means between 33 and 35% of those who responded to a survey. There was variation by occupation. It was most common for professionals (58 percent) to have done some work from home, followed closely by managers (57 percent). The occupations where it was least likely to have done some work from home were machinery operators and drivers (6.0 percent), followed closely by labourers (6.5 percent). You do wonder what labouring on a building site you can do from home!
For a bit more detail, the 2018 census asked people if they worked from home. This was in response to the question of what people’s main means of travel to work was.
Main means of travel to work is the usual method by which an employed person aged 15 years and over used to travel the longest distance to their place of employment (for example, by bicycle, public bus, walking, or driving).
'Usual' is the type of transport used most often - for example, the one used for the greatest number of days each week, month, or year. If there are two (or more) forms of transport used equally as often, the most recent form of transport was recorded.
So if someone ticked ‘worked at home’, it is likely that this was a full time arrangement, rather than a one day a week type situation.
In the Auckland Region, 72, 000 people said that they usually worked at home, out of total responses of 825,000, or about 9% of the respondents.
This rate is fairly consistent across the other two big urban regions (Wellington and Canterbury) with 9 and 12% of workers respectively. But who worked from home - what occupations were the most common WFH'ers, and where did people live?
If you look at the map of who worked from home in 2018 in Auckland, then the ‘work from homers’ were concentrated along the eastern seaboard; that is the eastern central Isthmus and coastal north shore. The map shows the percentage of employed residents over 15 years old who worked at home, by census area unit.
Figure 1: % working from home - 2018 census
Sure, there is a ring of work from homers in the rural areas surrounding the city, but these are probably mostly farmers and lifestylers.
What is interesting is the low rate of work from home in the west and south of the urban area.
Unfortunately, the 2018 census does not list travel to work arrangements by industry. The 2013 and 2006 census do. Figure 2 below is the percentage of workers who answered the census question and ticked worked from home when asked for their means of travel to work on the day of the census.
The two big groups of WFH'ers were rental, hiring and real estate jobs; and professional, scientific and technical services . In other words real estate agents and consultants. Arts and recreation were also above the average.
Figure 2: Percent of workers working from home by job category, 2006 and 2013
In terms of numbers, the professional, scientific and technical services stand out, and that makes sense; it is a big employment category in the Region and one where workers do spend a lot of time sitting at a desk with a computer, and many maybe self employed.
Figure 3: Number working from home by job category, 2013
Now the pandemic may prompt more people, and a different set of workers, to work from home than that recorded by the 2018 census. But equally it may just reinforce current patterns.
If so, will more work from homers see more sprawl and less congested roads? My pick is no to both.
WFH may weaken demand to travel into the central Isthmus but it is unlikely to reduce demand for travel from western and southern residences to workplaces in the southern Isthmus and Manukau. The potential outcome is weaker public transport demand into the CBD, not less; while the cross-town car travel demand remains.
NZTA reports (pre the current Covid 19 Level 3 2.0) traffic on Auckland’s motorway network is now 89.7% of same time last year. The below graph is counts from SH 20, an important cross town link between the west and south.
Figure 4: NZTA traffic counts - SH 20, Auckland
As for public transport patronage, data from Auckland Transport (see below) suggests patronage is at about 80% of the same time last year, for the month of July. The decline is strongest in the weekdays (the humps in the graph, the dips are the weekend).
So maybe the work from homers is having more of an impact on public transport than car journeys. Kind of makes sense when you see who does work from home.
Figure 5: Auckland Transport public transport patronage, July 2020 and July 2019
What about the move out to the edge of town for all those real estate agents and consultants freed from the daily commute ? This seems unlikely given the attraction of the living environment of the central Isthmus and coastal north shore to these groups of workers. Further more this group probably has some of the better and easier commutes than most other groups. If the lockdown is any case study, any time saved from not travelling into the office is likely to be spent enjoying the inner city environment. And yes demand for CBD cafes may go down, but demand for a coffee in the inner suburban centres is likely to go up.
