Until the middle of the year, Costa Rica had 2,068,604 employed persons, that is, with a job; of them 14.3% were remote workers.This is clear from the National Household Survey (Enaho) carried out in July 2021 by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).
That means that just over 296,000 people use the work-at-home mode.Of that total number of people who telecommute, the majority started due to the Covid-19 pandemic, that is 83.6%.
Even in the public sector there was a presidential decree for the institutions to apply this modality to those officials whose work does not require physical presence.That is, because of the pandemic, both the public and private sectors began to allow their employees to perform their functions away from the office.
“In urban areas 17.3% of people telework, while 5.3% do so in rural areas,” the study said. That is, there is a difference of 11.9 percentage points.The average remote work per week is four days and it is women who use this modality the most.”The percentage of women who telework is 18.9% while in the case of men it is 11.3%,” the survey indicated.
Most connected
The percentage of people who telework is very small when compared to the percentage of households that have an Internet connection.There are just over 1.6 million homes in the country.
According to the Enaho, 81.3% of these homes have a connection to the network, that is, just over 1.3 million. The urban area is where more families have Internet, with 85.3%. In rural areas the percentage reached 70.6%.There are 308,000 homes that still do not have any connection of this type.
Regarding the issue of education and connectivity, 75.2% of people who attend formal education have Internet for private service at home. 15.1% have access subsidized by the “Connected Homes” program.On the other hand, 9.8% of this population does not have Internet service in their home.
