From Peachland to Lake Country, the proportion of residents who work from home is higher than anywhere else in Canada, according to the latest Census figures.
A reported 9.3 per cent of Kelowna CMA residents work from their homes, in Victoria a reported 8.4 per cent save themselves the commute and in Vancouver it’s 8.2 per cent.
These areas also had some of the highest proportions of people working in professional, scientific and technical services, such as engineers, including computer engineers, accountants and various kinds of consultants. Conversely, the lowest shares of at-home workers were in Thunder Bay, Windsor and Greater Sudbury, each at around four per cent .
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Where Canadians work are grouped into four main categories: those with a usual place of work; those who work at home; those who have no fixed workplace address; and those who work outside Canada.
The proportion of employed people who commuted to a usual place of work declined from 83.9 per cent in 1996 to 80.6 per cent in 2016.
The proportion of Canadians working at home has also been slowly declining, from 8.2 per cent in 1996 to 7.4 per cent in 2016. This decline is attributable to the lower number of workers in farming occupations, since these occupations have the highest proportion of at-home workers.
In 1996, one in four at-home workers was in a farming occupation. By 2016, this proportion had fallen to about one in seven. The decline in farming occupations coincides with a 30.0 per cent decrease (-83,056) in agricultural operations since 1996, as reported in the 2016 Census of Agriculture release.
Excluding farming occupations, the share of Canadians working at home in 1996 and 2016 was roughly the same, at just over six per cent.
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