Remote Work in Toronto: Insights from Statistics Canada

As more workers across Canada return to the office after years of remote or hybrid work arrangements brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study from Statistics Canada is showing where in Toronto those jobs could be done from home, and how reimagining those offices could help with housing.

Released recently, the report titled "Geography of teleworkable jobs in the Greater Toronto Area" uses data from the 2021 census to highlight that there is a very large concentration of jobs in the city’s financial district and downtown core that could be done remotely.

Using a grid, Statistics Canada broke a map of the city into 0.5 kilometre-by-0.5-kilometre squares to illustrate where exactly these jobs are located. It found that within the core area, each square represented 3,600 or more jobs that were teleworkable.

Further, the regions immediately neighbouring this core and, notably, some regions along Yonge Street contain an additional 1,400 to 3,600 jobs that could be performed from home.

A map showing the geography of teleworkable jobs in Toronto by 0.5 kilometre region. (Statistics Canada)

A zoomed-out map of the Greater Toronto Area shows there are many "pockets" within the region where jobs could be performed remotely, specifically in and around Yonge Street. Areas like the city centre of Mississauga also contain up to roughly 3,600 teleworkable jobs per 0.5 kilometre.

The study defines a job that can be done from home as one that doesn’t require an employee to work directly with the public, work outdoors, operate or repair machinery and equipment, etc.

A map showing where in the Greater Toronto Area teleworkable jobs are located. (Statistics Canada)

How many people are currently working from home?

According to the data cited in the report, the percentage of employees across Canada who spent most of their working hours at home in November 2024 stood at 18.2 per cent. That’s down from 25.4 per cent in November 2020 (months after the COVID-19 pandemic started), but up from 3.6 per cent in May 2016.

At the end of 2024, StatCan noted, the national office vacancy rate in Canada was approximately 18.7 per cent, a 2025 CBRE study found, "suggesting there is a lot of underutilized space available for conversions."

The goal of the report was to identify and visualize where those offices are located in Toronto to inform which spaces could be converted to address Canada’s housing shortage.

Conversions are potentially attractive because they often make use of existing infrastructure. They may also help alleviate the problem of underutilized office space observed in recent years. The report noted that the City of Calgary has approved 11 such projects in 2024 to create 1,400 new residential units. The City of Hamilton has also started a new grant pilot program in the same vein.

Amid rising costs of living in cities and displacement of lower-income families from city centres, work from home and building conversions might be a potential avenue for increasing housing supply.

The report comes amid widespread return-to-office mandates from a number of large Canadian companies, which have called employees back to the office on a full or part-time basis, most notably Canada’s four major banks.

The Ontario government announced last month that it too planned to bring all public servants back to the office full-time starting in the New Year. Public sector employees in the province have pushed back against the move, and recently rallied outside Queen’s Park to protest the province’s return-to-office mandate.