Homeworking has necessarily exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic took a grip on the world in 2020, with the UN labour agency (ILO) estimating that it may have more than doubled, from around 260 million people in 2019, to some 580 million.

A new ILO report, released on Wednesday, lays out the penalties paid by those now having to work from home, which include higher health risks, lower wages, and social isolation.

However, Sergei Soares, a labour economist at the ILO who worked on the report, told UN News’s Conor Lennon, that some employers are happy with the productivity gains they have seen, which means the “great teleworking experiment” is likely to continue.

Mr. Soares began by explaining that the impetus behind the publication of the report was the fact that very few countries have ratified the ILO’s Home Work Convention, which entered into force some twenty years ago.