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People are working longer hours during the pandemic

Working from home is less liberating than many hoped

LOTS OF PEOPLE envisaged a life of lie-ins and long lunches when covid-19 lockdowns forced their offices to close and working from home became routine. In Britain 47% of workers clocked in remotely in April, compared with an average of around 14% in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics. By October, four months after the first lockdown had eased, the figure was still 27%. But reality has turned out to be less idyllic than the dream. Daily commutes have been replaced by endless emails and video-meetings. A new report finds that people around the world are working for longer, on average, than they did before the pandemic.

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