FOR the last three months, more people have been going to work as normal than working from home.

The Office for National Statistics have been trying to get a handle on what is actually happening due to coronavirus with their Opinions and Lifestyle survey: it is only a sample survey, based on 2,000 or so people, but it is fairly robust and until some stronger figures come along, the best source.

The survey shows that, as of August 9, 23 per cent of people with jobs are fully working from home: that is a massive change. But it is still a minority, because at the same time 48 per cent of people travelled to work normally. And 7 per cent of those in jobs both travelled to their regular workplace and worked from home.

Worryingly 21 per cent of people who said they were working from home didn’t actually work — either because they were furloughed or in some other way off work.

The larger group travelling to work has been the case for some time: 41 per cent of those in jobs travelled to work in June, compared to 29 per cent purely working from home.

You have to go back to May to find to find 29 per cent of people going to work and 33 per cent of people working from home.

While back in April 26 per cent of people travelled to work, 39 per cent of people worked from home .

I don’t want to underestimate the huge change the Covid-19 lockdown had on people’s working lives.

Obviously, we are always alert to what is new. It’s the change that stands out. And whether it’s 39 per cent in April or the 23 per cent of people now, the shift to working from home was massive, involving millions of workers.

So it is right to focus on what effect this had on working conditions, family life, or the economy.

But I don’t think we should forget that the larger group are still travelling to work and have been for much of the pandemic. I worry that because journalists are more likely to work from home than, say, warehouse workers or call centre staff or cleaners, this will distort reporting.

Because there are a separate set of issues about returning to work — issues about workplace hygiene, availability of PPE, space at work and staggering work times. They need reporting as well.

In many ways lockdown was an admission of failure — a crude method of infection control used because other public health measures were unavailable.

Nations that could really control the virus through proper public health measures were able to avoid substantial lockdowns: so South Korea used thorough and fast contact tracing, public hygiene, cleaning and widespread use of masks and temperature checks, with no national lockdown.

As we come out of lockdown, there will be new spread of the virus — but if we use proper control measures, we should both expect that and be able to deal with it. That means we need to be able to use proper infection control measures at work — which will be one of the prime places of transmission.

There are four problems that put this at risk.

The first is our “deregulating” government not doing enough to promote or enforce workplace measures.

The second is too many bosses have a cheap labour, low investment model.

The third is that our trade unions, which are the key to the best health and safety practice, have been worn down by legal restriction.

The fourth is too many in our media won’t think enough about the working lives of the majority of people to properly report the problems.

There are some really good journalists who have exposed the dangers in our workplaces — but they are the exceptional minority, not the norm.