RIGA, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Like in many other countries across the world, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led an increasing number of employees in Latvia to work from home, showed a survey released on Thursday by the national statistics office.
In April, more than one in five employees in Latvia, or 22 percent, switched to work from home, according to the statistics office's survey.
While an estimated 19,000 people had been working from home already before Latvia was hit by the COVID-19 crisis, the number of employees doing their job remotely has increased to 148,400 now.
More than one in four employees, or 27.4 percent, had the remote work option in April, while 72.6 percent of the working population had to go to work during the virus emergency. Meanwhile, 5.4 percent of the people who had the option to work from home preferred not to use it.
The financial and insurance sector reported the highest proportion of employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic (82.5 percent), while the lowest proportion of employees working remotely was recorded in manufacturing (6.9 percent).
The labor force survey, which was conducted in April, included 1,400 respondents, aged 15 to 74, from 996 households. Enditem
